


Dangerous

by jjmash



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Alpha Derek Hale, Angst, BAMF Stiles, Fake/Pretend Relationship, Future Fic, Hurt/Comfort, Implied/Referenced Torture, M/M, Magical Stiles Stilinski, Nightmares, Not Canon Compliant, Panic Attacks, Slow Build
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-04
Updated: 2021-02-10
Packaged: 2021-03-14 21:16:24
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 7
Words: 30,600
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28552230
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jjmash/pseuds/jjmash
Summary: There are a lot of things that the pack doesn’t know about Stiles.Some of it is little things he simply has no reason to mention, like how he almost failed organic chemistry his first semester at Stanford. Some of it is bigger stuff that he just can’t bring himself to think about, like the nightmares that still plague most of his nights and trap him inside his own mind in increasingly horrific ways.But most importantly, the pack doesn’t know all the ways in which Stiles has transformed during his time away from them. He doesn’t need fangs and claws to be dangerous.
Relationships: Derek Hale/Stiles Stilinski
Comments: 45
Kudos: 629





	1. Stitches

**Author's Note:**

> Allison, Erica, and Boyd are all alive and members of the Hale pack. Canon compliant through season two only, although some plot points from later seasons (like the nogitsune possession) are referenced. The sheriff's name is John because I just can't refer to him any other way.
> 
> CW: description of a panic attack, death of an unnamed background character

Stiles heaved his overstuffed duffel off the Jeep's passenger seat and let out a contented sigh at the sight of his childhood home.

“Stiles!” John Stilinski ambled down the front steps, his arms thrown open in a greeting for his son and his eyes crinkling with laugh lines as he grinned. 

Stiles met his smile with one of his own and tentatively accepted the offered hug, rubbing his cheek against the familiar roughness of his dad’s uniform.

“When are you gonna stop growing? I swear, kid, you get taller every time you come home.”

Stiles smirked; his dad was several inches shorter than him now. “Do you think it’s too late for me to take up basketball?”

“I think your lack of coordination might disqualify you, son.” Stiles made as if to protest, but his dad stopped him with a wave of his hand. “You wouldn’t have time for another extracurricular anyway. I practically had to put an APB out to get you to come home as it is.”

Stiles ran a hand through his hair and did his best to look contrite. He still had a few quarters left to finish at Stanford thanks to his gap year, but he’d decided to do his summer internship remotely; he couldn’t stand any more of the not-so-subtle guilt trips his dad had been giving him since he’d decided to take a research trip to Romania over winter break instead of returning home. 

As cool as the offices of the tech company that Stiles would be interning for had looked in pictures, he couldn’t help but appreciate the consistency of his old bedroom. It wasn’t a room that really fit him anymore: his legs dangled off the edge of the twin bed, the posters that covered the walls were of bands he hadn’t listened to in years, and the old clock radio flickered pathetically with 00:00 rather than the time. But Stiles loved it anyway. It was like a museum of his own memories, the good and the not so good all spread out for him to see. 

Stiles had just collapsed heavily onto the bed when the window slid open in a move so familiar that he almost wanted to cry with nostalgia. Scott tumbled into the room, grinning maniacally as he threw himself at his best friend.

“Oof,” Stiles grunted as the werewolf collapsed on top of him. “You’re gonna break my bed, dude,” he complained with a wheeze. 

Scott ignored him completely, too absorbed in sniffing at the spot where his nose was buried in Stiles’ neck. Stiles had long since gotten used to what he affectionately referred to as the pack’s “weird wolfy scent thing,” but it still took all of his self control not to shove Scott off the bed and reclaim some of his personal space. Instead he silently took himself through his deep breathing exercises, trying to tamp down the rising panic attack brought on by having someone physically on top of him.

“Missed you, dude.” Stiles rolled his eyes at Scott’s characteristic earnestness (because seriously, they’d texted or called practically every day) but couldn’t help smiling in return.

“Same here, bro. So, what’s up in Beacon Hills?”

Stiles listened to Scott ramble on about his new apprenticeship at Deaton’s vet office and the pack’s latest escapades, all of which he’d already heard about, and let the sound of his best friend’s voice lull him into a well-deserved nap.

***

It was a full three days before Stiles got to see the rest of the pack. He met Boyd, looking just as stoic as ever, outside the elevator bank of Derek’s apartment building. 

The werewolf gave him a small, friendly smile. “Hey, Stiles. You back for the whole summer this time?”

“Yup!” Stiles rocked back on his heels as they waited for the elevator. “Is everyone else here already?”

Boyd cocked his head to the side, listening for the others’ heartbeats several floors above them. “All except Scott and Allison,” he said confidently. 

The elevator doors opened with a ding and Stiles stepped into the small space, taking care not to bump Boyd’s broad shoulders as he settled against one of the handrails. “I didn’t know she was coming, actually. I kind of tuned Scott out after he said ‘emergency pack meeting,’ you know?”

Boyd frowned. “Yeah, we haven’t had much of anything to deal with in almost a year. I figure we’re probably due for a bad one.”

Stiles nodded grimly in response. This was what he liked about Boyd–-unlike Scott, the man had no issues with realism.

Stiles followed Boyd into the loft, hiding behind his bulk for as long as possible. Despite his attempts to make a stealthy entrance, several heads swiveled toward Stiles in unison as he shrugged out of his hoodie. It would’ve been comical if it wasn’t so horror movie-esque. 

“Uh, hi?”

They were all talking at once, alternately greeting him and demanding to know why he hadn’t been home in a year. Erica and Lydia both looked ready to physically pounce on him when he threw his hands up in surrender.

“Okay, okay! Stop yelling at me, jesus.” Stiles smiled despite himself; their love for him was like a tangible thing.

“You can all jump on Stiles later,” a gruff voice said from his left. 

Derek was leaning casually against the archway that led to the kitchen, surveying the scene with a soft expression that Stiles had never seen on him before-–it was something close to affection, and Stiles felt his stomach do a familiar little flip. 

The alpha looked the same as always: dark leather jacket slung over broad shoulders, stubble perfectly trimmed, immense power lurking just beneath the surface. In high school, Stiles had tried to emulate the air of danger that Derek seemed to naturally emit. He didn’t need to try very hard anymore. 

Stiles was startled out of his thoughts by a sharp jab to his back, and he was pulling his would-be attacker into a tight headlock before he could even think about it. 

“It’s me, dude! Let me go!” Scott’s voice was muffled from where Stiles’ sleeve was pressed against his mouth, but Stiles relaxed his hold instantly as he recognized his best friend’s curly brown hair. 

“Sorry, man,” Stiles said sheepishly as Scott straightened up and smoothed down his shirt. Scott just grinned back at him happily, seemingly unaware of the _disable, hurt, kill_ instinct that was still stampeding involuntarily through Stiles’ brain.

“It’s cool, I shouldn’t have snuck up on you.”

Stiles let himself be kissed on the cheek by Allison before they all settled into the living room, Stiles on the floor and slightly apart from the others. Derek moved to stand in the middle of their haphazard semi-circle and they all fell silent instantly.

“The Sheriff has something for us,” Derek began, throwing a quick glance to Stiles at the mention of his father. “Someone’s been killing hikers out near the preserve, clawing them to death. I think it’s an omega, but given the damage to the bodies I think whoever it is must be pretty far gone, possibly feral.”

There was a collective intake of breath and Lydia spoke up from her spot on Jackson’s lap. “So what are we doing about it?”

“Patrols,” Derek said shortly. “I’ve drawn up a rotation that works around everyone’s schedules. Pairs only, and if you find any sign of it don’t approach until you’ve called for backup. It might be nothing, but I don’t want us taking any chances if it is feral.”

Derek tapped something into his phone, and Stiles’ felt his own vibrate in his pocket. He pulled it out and scrolled through the airdropped patrol schedule, frowning as he scanned the list of names for the following week.

“Uh, Derek?” After spending three years in college lectures, Stiles almost felt like he should be raising his hand. He waited until Derek nodded at him to speak. “I’m not on the list.”

“I know.”

“Derek?” The alpha sighed but nodded to him again. _“Why_ am I not on the list?”

“No humans,” was the only response he received. 

Stiles jumped up from his place on the floor in light outrage. “That’s discrimination!”

Derek raised an eyebrow at him. “You hate the woods,” he pointed out. 

“Hate is a very strong word,” Stiles protested. “I can be useful!”

“It’s not about being useful. You’re more breakable than we are.”

 _Not that breakable,_ Stiles thought to himself. Out loud he said, “And that’s why we’re going in pairs. It’s not like I haven’t been involved in stuff like this before. In fact, I’ve been involved in way worse stuff than this.” He pointed at Jackson accusingly. “Remember when Jackson turned into a gross lizard thing that paralyzed people? I was very involved in that.”

“Hey!” Jackson interrupted indignantly.

Stiles continued without acknowledging him. “Remember when I nearly had to cut your arm off to save your wolfy ass? Or how about the time that–”

“Okay!” Derek practically shouted. “Okay, fine. You can come with me on Tuesday. Erica, you can take that night off.”

Erica crowed from her place on the couch. “Sweet! Thanks, Stiles.”

He shot a grin her way and then nodded smugly at Derek, whose earlier affectionate expression had been fully replaced by irritation. Stiles resumed his place on the floor as the conversation turned toward less urgent updates and then devolved into idle chatter, content in his small victory over the alpha and happy to be surrounded once again by the people he loved most in the world. 

_The people you almost left behind forever,_ the mean little voice in the back of his head whispered to him. Stiles mentally shoved it away just in time to be tackled by Erica, Jackson, and Isaac all at once. He let himself be crushed by the wolves and forced his body to go limp rather than give in to the instinct to fight them off.

“Why’d you stay away for so long?” Erica all but growled into his ear. Stiles tried to shift some of her weight off of him and willed his breathing to remain steady.

“School stuff,” he grunted, his chest tight.

“You spent your whole gap year in Romania, why’d you need to go back?” Isaac whined.

Stiles huffed. “Only six months. My thesis…” he trailed off, gritting his teeth against the surge of adrenaline threatening to overtake him.

Jackson rolled his eyes, somehow managing to look bored and disdainful even as he literally nuzzled himself into Stiles’ side. “Such a fucking nerd.”

Lydia piped up from somewhere beyond Stiles’ field of vision, “You like nerds!”

Jackson turned toward her for a moment, giving Stiles a brief reprieve to gasp in a couple of quick breaths. “Sorry, babe, you know I don’t mean you.”

Stiles breathed in one last gulp of air and shoved with all of his strength, dislodging Erica and Isaac from their spots on top of him. 

“Sorry,” he mumbled, jumping to his feet. “Bathroom.”

Stiles all but ran down the hall, shutting the bathroom door behind him as quietly as possible before sinking down onto the cool tile floor, his head pressed into his hands. His vision swam with unbidden memories; he could feel the cold metal of chains wrapping around his wrists, the sharp edge of a blade pushing slowly under his skin, the burn of a hot poker against his back. He was losing his mind, he was drowning, he was dying. 

There was a sudden pressure on his shoulder and Stiles jerked away from it violently, nearly cracking his head against the porcelain base of the sink.

“It’s okay, Stiles.” The voice came from far away, but it was familiar. “Just breathe, you have to breathe.” The voice started counting, and Stiles struggled to match his inhales and exhales to the slow rhythm of it. Stiles placed two fingers over his pulse and let the racing of his heart remind him that he was still alive. He pressed his back into the tiled wall, grounding himself in the coldness of it. When his breathing had almost regained a steady rhythm, Stiles looked up to find a concerned Derek crouching in the corner of the room, holding himself carefully away from Stiles.

“Sorry.” Stiles’ voice was shakier than he had intended, and he silently cursed himself for it.

Derek just frowned at him until Stiles finally found the strength to stand. He splashed a bit of water on his face, running his hands through his disheveled hair in an attempt to flatten it.

“Stiles–” Derek outstretched an arm toward his shoulder but stopped short. His hand hung in the air for a second before he dropped it back to his side, unconsciously squeezing it into a fist.

“Stiles,” he started again. His voice was low. “I can tell them not to, if you don’t like it.”

“No,” he said sharply-–this was everything he’d been working so carefully to avoid. If he couldn’t even be normal around his pack he thought he might really lose his mind.

Derek examined him carefully, and Stiles did his best not to cringe away from the alpha’s intense gaze. “Okay,” Derek said at last. “I won’t say anything.”

Stiles nodded once in gratitude and left to rejoin the others.

***

Stiles was just finishing up dinner with his dad when he heard the rumbling engine of the Camaro as it pulled into the driveway on Tuesday night. 

“Is that Derek?” the Sheriff asked, stabbing at his brussels sprouts with more aggression than was really warranted.

“Yup,” Stiles replied, popping the ‘p’ in satisfaction.

“Do I want to know what you’re doing?”

“Nothing too dangerous,” he responded immediately, already getting up to answer the firm knock at the door. Derek was standing on the front step with his hands in his pockets, looking unusually nervous. Stiles waved him into the house wordlessly, leading the way back to the kitchen just in time to catch his dad hastily shoveling the last of his vegetables down the garbage disposal.

“Dad!”

John only looked a little guilty as he apologized. “Sorry, son. A man can only eat so many brussels sprouts.”

Stiles poked at his side in irritation, shoving him over so that he could start on the dishes. The Sheriff and Derek exchanged greetings while Stiles waited for the water to get hot.

“Does he make you guys eat rabbit food too?”

“No, but only because I do most of the cooking,” Derek replied easily.

“Derek doesn’t have high cholesterol, so he’s allowed to eat whatever he wants,” Stiles retorted.

John mumbled something under his breath that had Derek choking on a surprised laugh.

“Hey!” Stiles whipped around, soap bubbles splattering across the counter beside him. “You’ll thank me when you’re still alive and kicking in forty years.”

John’s face softened as he pried the dish sponge from his son’s grasp. “Go on,” he said. “Go do whatever supernatural thing you’re planning to do tonight. Try not to hurt yourself.”

Stiles mock pouted. “Why don’t you tell Derek not to hurt himself?”

“Derek’s a werewolf,” John said simply. 

Stiles sighed reluctantly. “Okay, fine.”

They were almost out the door when he remembered to shout, “Love you!” He waited for his dad’s echoed response before following Derek out to the car.

***

Derek caught the omega’s scent less than a mile into the preserve, pulling Stiles along roughly as he tracked it off one of the more popular hiking trails. They were deep into the woods before they found the werewolf, who let out a sharp growl at their approach.

There was a ring of mountain ash surrounding the wolf before he could take more than a step, and he fell to a crouch as he pressed up against the invisible barrier. Derek knelt down beside him.

“You’re in Hale territory.” The alpha’s eyes flashed red in warning and Stiles smirked down at the captive wolf.

“I don’t mean any harm,” the werewolf responded, a slight tremor in his voice. 

Stiles snorted. “I’m not sure the dead hikers would agree with you,” he said lightly. 

The omega scowled but didn’t look at him, speaking instead to Derek. “Quiet your pet,” he spat.

Stiles didn’t respond, but he tightened the ring of mountain ash with a wave of his fingers, drawing it in so close that the wolf couldn’t even twitch without running into a solid barrier on all sides. Stiles didn’t know what it felt like to be held in place by mountain ash, but he certainly understood the intense discomfort of being trapped.

“He’s a member of the Hale pack.” Derek’s voice was hard as steel, and Stiles looked over at him in surprise. Stiles himself had gotten used to being underestimated a long time ago–-he encouraged it, actually, preferring to fade into the background until he could sweep in to save the day.

“Leave our territory peacefully and do not return,” Derek grit out at the wolf, “or we will take you down.”

The werewolf growled once, but slowly nodded in agreement. Stiles let go of the magic keeping the mountain ash barrier in place at Derek’s signal, only for the wolf to launch itself at him immediately. Stiles swung the dagger he’d concealed in the sleeve of his hoodie instinctively, jabbing it up under the wolf’s rib cage and directly into the soft muscle of his heart. The wolf scrabbled at Stiles’ shoulder with sharp claws as he fell to the ground in slow-motion. Stiles leaned over the wolf on the forest floor, forcing it to look up at him in its last moments.

The wolf took its final breath, and Stiles withdrew his dagger with a sickening squelch before dragging it along the grass to wipe away the blood.

He stood over the dead body for a moment until a shuffling noise drew his attention, his dagger instantly back at the ready. But it was just Derek, staring at him with an unreadable expression.

“Wolfsbane,” Stiles explained, waving the dagger loosely in front of him with a practiced air. 

“Are you hurt?”

Stiles frowned and did a quick mental inventory; the waning adrenaline left a sharp pain in its place, and his hand came away bloody when he pressed it to his chest. He winced, more at the sight of his own blood than the pain. 

“Ah. One of his claws must’ve got me, the fucker.” Derek looked alarmed, but Stiles just slowly maneuvered out of his sweatshirt and tied it around his ribcage tightly to staunch the blood. “I’m okay, really.” 

Derek looked unconvinced, but Stiles was already turning to walk back in the direction of the Camaro.

The ride home was quiet and Stiles worked to keep himself from fidgeting in the passenger seat. The pain was manageable, but Derek’s silence made him nervous.

“Should I text the others to let them know that patrols are off?”

Derek grunted at him, his eyes fixed on the road. “Already done.”

“And the body?” Stiles asked casually. Derek’s grip on the steering wheel tightened almost imperceptibly.

“Isaac and Boyd are taking care of it.”

Stiles settled back into his seat, glancing over at Derek’s profile. “Are you mad?”

“About what?”

Stiles waved his hand theatrically and grimaced as it sent a wave of pain shooting through his torso. “The killing thing,” he said.

Derek was silent for so long that Stiles thought he might not have heard him. Just as he was about to repeat himself, Derek spoke up again. “No,” he said simply.

“That’s it?” 

“I’m mad that you got hurt,” he amended reluctantly. 

“Aw, were you worried about me?” Stiles grinned, letting his humor deflect from the sudden discomfort he felt at Derek’s confession. 

Derek growled threateningly, but he didn’t deny it.

***

Stiles wasn’t surprised when Derek parked the Camaro and followed him into the house rather than just dropping him off. John had already left for a shift, so Stiles didn’t bother trying to hide his wince as he trudged up the stairs to the bathroom. He lowered himself into the bathtub while Derek hovered near the doorway, hissing in pain as he untied the ruined hoodie from around his chest. He looked down at what remained of his t-shirt, now soaked through with blood, and shook his head in irritation. A perfectly good shirt, ruined.

“Can you grab the scissors from my desk?” 

Derek was gone and back before Stiles could even finish the sentence, but instead of handing over the scissors he knelt beside the tub and slowly began snipping away at the tattered fabric himself. Finally, Stiles was able to ease the t-shirt away from his body and examine the wound beneath. A long, dark gash extended from his collar bone down over his ribcage, and Stiles swore in frustration as he watched more blood gush slowly out of it. 

“Should I get Deaton?” Derek asked, his hands flitting over Stiles’ skin nervously. 

“No,” Stiles ground out through clenched teeth. “Get me the First Aid kit, under the sink.”

Derek brought it over and Stiles rummaged through its contents with one hand, the other pressed tightly to the wound on his chest in an effort to stem the tide of blood.

“There should be a bottle of water under there too, and a handle of vodka.” 

“How often do you do this?” Derek questioned under his breath, but he didn’t hesitate to pull out the supplies that Stiles asked for. He uncapped the water and gave it to Stiles, who used it to clear away as much of the blood as possible.

“Vodka?” 

Derek handed it over, and Stiles sucked in a breath as he let the alcohol wash over his skin. Satisfied that the wound was at least mostly clean, Stiles pulled out a sterile needle and nylon sutures from the First Aid kit, then paused as he looked down at the gash on his torso.

“This angle might be a problem. Can you…?” He held the needle out to Derek, who raised an eyebrow at him.

“You want me to give you stitches,” he said dubiously. “Why can’t we just call Deaton?”

Stiles grit his teeth. “We don’t need Deaton, and it’d take him too long to get here anyway. It’s not that hard, I’ll talk you through it.”

Derek still looked uncertain, but he took the needle and thread from Stiles and sat down on the floor beside him. Stiles leaned back against the foot of the tub and closed his eyes. “Just pull the two sides of my skin together, not too tight, and stick the needle through.”

Derek did as instructed and Stiles gripped the sides of the bathtub to keep himself from flinching. Derek worked his way down the gash as quickly as possible, his fingers steady against Stiles’ torn skin. 

“You have a lot of tattoos now,” he observed as he tied off the last suture. Stiles exhaled and shook out the tension in his hands as Derek finished. 

“Yeah,” he said simply, looking down to examine Derek’s handiwork. “I got most of them during my gap year.”

“They’re nice,” Derek said, before immediately turning away to reassemble the First Aid kit.

“Uh, thanks?” he replied, unable to keep the surprise from his voice.

Stiles liked his tattoos, although he’d gotten them more out of necessity than for aesthetic purposes. Dark, thick lines criss-crossed over most of his torso, beginning at his heart and spreading outward across his ribs and down his stomach, a few wispy trails of black ink dipping below his waistband. Whenever people asked, Stiles said they were old Polish designs in honor of his mother. In reality, they were powerful protection wards that made him virtually untraceable to most supernatural creatures.

Stiles lifted himself out of the bathtub self-consciously, keeping his back turned toward the wall and praying that Derek hadn’t seen the oddly-shaped burn mark that rested just above his tailbone.

“So,” he cleared his throat uncomfortably. “I’m gonna clean this up, hopefully before my dad gets home. Thanks for the stitches.”

Derek nodded awkwardly. “Goodnight, Stiles.”

“Goodnight, Derek.”


	2. Tattoos

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> CW: brief descriptions of torture, blood (skip over the italicized parts if you'd prefer not to read those sections)

Derek didn’t mention the incident with the omega, so Stiles didn’t either. He figured that the others knew he’d killed the werewolf and were simply exercising some rare tact in not bringing it up with him; it didn’t occur to him that Derek hadn’t actually told them the full story until Scott showed up at his house the following afternoon looking panicked. 

“Dude,” he said, pushing his way through the door without an invitation. “You got hurt? Why didn’t you say anything?”

“Hi, Scott. I’m good, how are you?” Stiles muttered sarcastically.

Scott flopped into his unofficial spot on the well-loved couch and turned the full force of his puppy dog eyes on his best friend.

“Don’t look at me like that,” Stiles groaned, taking a seat beside him. “It wasn’t anything serious.”

“Derek seemed to think it was.”

“Derek is a worrier. He did a fine job with the sutures, I haven’t even torn them!”

Scott, rather than being reassured as Stiles had intended, looked horrified. “You had _Derek_ give you stitches?”

“I promise you, it’s not a big deal. I’ve done them myself plenty of times.” Stiles immediately realized his mistake as Scott’s worry turned to confusion.

“What are you talking about?”

Stiles sighed. “Nothing, Scott. It’s fine, here–” and Stiles lifted up his t-shirt so Scott could see the thin line of sutures that extended across his chest. “It was barely a scratch.”

“That does not look like a scratch,” Scott said dubiously. His brow furrowed as he continued to examine Stiles’ torso. “When did you get all those tattoos?”

Stiles dropped his t-shirt back down, hastily covering the black marks that littered his skin. “Gap year,” he said.

“You got those three years ago? How did I not know about it?”

“I guess I forgot to mention it.” Scott still looked confused, but Stiles rushed to redirect the conversation before he could ask any more questions. “Did Derek say anything else about the omega?”

Scott shook his head. “Nah, he just asked if my mom could take a look at you. It was weird though, he didn’t say anything about why he killed it.”

Stiles turned to him sharply. “About why _he_ killed it?”

“Yeah. Isaac and Boyd said when they went to go take care of the body it didn’t look like he’d used his claws at all. More like a knife, or something.” Stiles was silent for a beat too long. “Stiles?”

He shook himself out of his thoughts. “Weird,” he mumbled.

“Are you sure you’re okay?”

“I’m fine, Scott,” Stiles said, letting just a touch of exasperation leak through in his tone. 

“Well I still think you should have my mom check out your stitches. Or Deaton, at least.”

Stiles huffed his acquiescence. “I’ll find her at the hospital tomorrow if it’ll make you happy. God, I forgot what it’s like to have you as my nagging wife.” He said it teasingly, but it provoked a surprising blush from Scott.

“Um, about that,” he said, running a hand through his hair. “I’m kind of thinking about asking Allison to marry me.”

Stiles blinked at his best friend in shock. “Holy shit.”

“Yeah,” Scott said. “You think it’s a good idea, right?” He looked so nervously hopeful that Stiles’ heart melted instantly.

“I think it’s a fucking great idea, are you kidding me?”

Scott visibly relaxed in relief, his grin blinding as he pulled Stiles in for a hug that he didn’t even have to try very hard not to cringe away from. “You’ll be my best man? If she says yes, I mean.”

“Of course she’s going to say yes, why else would she have put up with you all these years?” Stiles grinned back at Scott. “And obviously I’ll be your best man. Your bachelor party is going to be amazing!” 

“Vegas?” Scott asked with a broad smile. 

“Better than Vegas,” Stiles promised enthusiastically.

***

In the week leading up to the proposal Stiles came harrowingly close to murdering his own best friend several times. Scott was a nervous wreck and he seemed determined to expend his excess energy by calling Stiles at all hours of the day and night to rehash his proposal plan.

“No, you’re not going to accidentally set the tablecloth on fire,” Stiles reassured his best friend for the fifth time in as many hours, trying to sound awake despite how ridiculously late it was.

“But what if I drop the ring?” Scott fretted.

“Then you’ll pick it up.” 

“What if she doesn’t like the ring?”

“Then you’ll return it and have her pick one that she does like. But she’s going to like the ring,” Stiles replied calmly.

“But what if–” 

Stiles cut him off with a long yawn. “Scott. We’ve been over all of this already. Everything is going to be fine. I will happily tease you about this for the rest of your life, starting at the engagement party tomorrow night, but I swear to god if you don’t let me go to sleep in the next five minutes I will personally ensure that you drop the ring _and_ set something on fire tomorrow.”

He heard Scott’s shaky exhale over the phone. “Okay, you’re right. Tha–” 

Stiles hung up before Scott could finish his sentence and was asleep before the other man realized he was speaking to a dial tone.

***

Stiles paced around the loft, silently cursing Scott’s nerves for rubbing off on him and pushing a rogue balloon out of his path. Lydia had been in fine form that afternoon, directing the pack with the fierceness of an army general as they filled Derek’s loft with what felt like an entire party store’s worth of decorations. Stiles wrung his hands together nervously, trying not to think about all the ways that his best friend–-god love him-–might be screwing up the most important moment of his life.

“Hey.” Derek’s gruff voice broke Stiles out of his worry.

“Hi.”

“How are the stitches?”

Stiles waved a hand airily. “Fine. Doesn’t even hurt.”

“Good.” Derek looked like he wanted to say something else, but just then the door to the loft crashed open and Scott and Allison stumbled across the threshold, hands entwined and faces flushed with excitement. Stiles immediately noted the diamond that glittered on Allison’s ring finger, and he felt himself beam back at the couple–the fiancees. 

A collective cheer went up when Allison brandished her left hand at them triumphantly, and Stiles clapped Scott on the back heartily. “I told you it’d be fine,” he said.

Scott just nodded, seemingly rendered speechless with joy. Stiles moved aside to let the others offer their congratulations, observing them with a bittersweet happiness. It felt like a distinct turning point: for so long it had been Scott and Stiles, and now it was shifting to Scott and Allison. 

“You okay?” Derek passed Stiles a beer and leaned against the wall beside him. 

Stiles nodded, fiddling with the aluminum tab. “I’m good. Happy for them.”

“They’re growing up.” 

Stiles glanced over at him, but the alpha was staring straight ahead. He didn’t miss the implication in Derek’s words; the others were all moving forward with their lives while Stiles felt like he was stuck in neutral. 

Stiles cuffed Derek on the shoulder lightly. “You did good,” he said. “With the whole alpha thing, I mean. Who knew we’d even live to make it to this point?”

Derek nodded in agreement, looking over his pack with pride. “I didn’t think I would.”

“You sound like an old man talking about his kids.”

“Aren’t I?” The corners of Derek’s mouth quirked up in a small, teasing smile. 

“Ugh, gross. That would make several of the dreams I had about you in high school wildly inappropriate,” Stiles quipped. He’d expected Derek to banter a joke back at him but instead the man stared over at him, dumbfounded.

“What?”

Stiles shifted his weight uncomfortably. “C’mon, don’t pretend like you didn’t know I had a crush on you back in high school.” 

When Derek just shook his head Stiles said, “There is literally no way you didn’t know, Derek. I wasn’t exactly subtle.”

Derek remained silent in apparent shock, so Stiles called Erica over with a wave. “Erica,” he implored. “You knew I had a crush on Derek in high school, right?”

She cackled. “Oh, are we finally talking about this?”

“See! Everyone knew. I thought you ignored it to be nice.”

Erica turned to Derek in surprise. “You haven’t told him?” she asked the alpha.

“Told me what?” Stiles questioned.

“Erica,” Derek growled a warning that had the beta making a hasty retreat.

“Never mind,” she said quickly. Stiles watched her walk away with a furrowed brow before turning back to press Derek further, only to find that the alpha had managed to slip away without him noticing.

***

Stiles contemplated the odd exchange when he was safely tucked into his own bed later that night. He’d given up on the idea of him and Derek before it’d even been a fully-formed desire-–between their age gap and their mutual resentment, it had always seemed nothing short of impossible. Stiles had done a good job of moving on after high school, a process aided by the time he’d spent out of the country during his gap year.

But now, if Stiles was being honest with himself, he felt a bit lonely. Scott had Allison, Lydia and Jackson had been practically attached at the hip since junior high, and Erica and Boyd would probably be engaged before the end of the year. Even Isaac had his weird maybe-more-than-friends-with-benefits thing with a guy from school, although he refused to talk about it with any of them. 

That left Stiles. He’d dated a few people at Stanford and he’d certainly had his fair share of one-night stands, but the closest thing he had to relationship experience had been with Alex nearly three years ago–-and Stiles very purposefully _did not_ think about Alex, ever. At least not while he was awake.

_Stiles curled further into the familiar warmth at his side, nuzzling into Alex’s neck with a soft exhale. He felt the dry chuckle of his bedmate more than he heard it, the werewolf’s chest rumbling beneath Stiles’ fingertips._

_“Up, human,” Alex said sternly, inching toward the edge of the bed._

_Stiles groaned and pulled him back to his chest. “No,” he grumbled defiantly._

_Alex easily could have removed himself from Stiles’ hold, but instead he simply sighed and turned so that he could face Stiles._

_“You have training, and I have work to do with the new betas.”_

_Alex’s face was close enough that Stiles could count each of his long eyelashes as they swept across his milky skin._

_“Cezar can wait,” he said._

_Alex laughed, a joyous sound that Stiles rarely got to hear outside of their bedroom. “Cezar is not known for his patience.”_

_“I don’t care,” Stiles replied petulantly, his hand snaking slowly down Alex’s chest, eliciting a small growl from the wolf as he circled a nipple languidly._

_“I can’t stay in bed with you all day,” Alex groaned._

_“Are you sure?” Stiles dipped a finger below the waistband of his sweatpants._

_Alex swatted his wandering hand away with a little more force than was necessary, although it was still nowhere near his full strength. “I’m sure. Now, up you get.”_

_Stiles yelped as he was lifted off the bed in a bridal carry and set delicately on his feet. “I fucking hate you,” he muttered, but Alex was already getting dressed in the corner._

_Stiles let himself admire the view for a moment; Alex’s body was all chiseled lines and hard muscle, like he’d stepped directly off the pages of a gay porn magazine. He radiated such intense power that Stiles had almost tripped over his own feet when he first met Alex on the outskirts of the ancient Romanian village that his pack called home. He had since learned to compartmentalize Alex in his mind: there was the Alex who served as high alpha of one of the oldest and most powerful werewolf packs in the world, and there was the Alex who laughed easily with Stiles and came undone beneath him every night. Stiles liked both Alexes, although he still found the former rather intimidating._

_Stiles moved toward the other man, wrapping his arms around Alex’s sturdy shoulders and placing a gentle kiss to the crook of his neck. “I’ll miss you today,” Stiles murmured._

_“I’ll miss you too, dragul meu,” he said, but it wasn’t Alex’s voice that responded. His rough, playful tones were replaced by the chillingly familiar sound of Alex's older–-and infinitely scarier-–brother. Stiles looked up in horror to find that the eyes staring back at him in the mirror were black as coal._

_“No.” Stiles leaped backwards but Nicolae followed him, grabbing one of his hands tight enough to hurt. The werewolf who had tormented Stiles for weeks on end cocked his head to the side, a psychotic grin stretching its way across his face and swallowing up the rest of his handsome features._

_“Mine.”_

Stiles woke with a start to the sound of his phone going off somewhere in his room. He fumbled for it at his bedside table, accidentally knocking it onto the floor as the ringing stopped for a second only to start up again immediately. Finally Stiles managed to dig it out from the crack between the nightstand and his bed, nearly pulling a muscle in the process. 

“Hello?” he grunted into it, still half-asleep and shaking from the wet dream turned nightmare.

“It’s me. Something’s happened, Derek wants us all at the loft like, right now.”

“What?” Stiles’ brain took a moment to process Scott’s words. “He wants us there now? It’s like–” Stiles pulled the phone away from his ear to check the time, “–four in the morning.”

“I don’t know, man. It must be bad.”

Stiles sighed, already rolling out of bed. “Fine, I’ll be there in twenty. He’d better have coffee, though.”

Derek did indeed have coffee waiting for them when they arrived. Stiles accepted the offered mug gratefully, intentionally brushing his fingers against Derek’s in a feather-light touch as he took it. The other man didn’t seem to notice, and Stiles decided to follow his lead in not revisiting the strange conversation from earlier in the evening.

Stiles felt a creeping sense of deja vu as Derek called them to order. The alpha held up a crumpled piece of yellowing paper that had some sort of design painted in the middle of it that Stiles couldn’t quite make out. “This was left on my car tonight,” he said.

“What is it?” Erica asked.

“I’m not sure, but I think it’s a warning.” Derek paused for a moment. “It was drawn in human blood.”

“Christ,” Isaac whispered. 

Lydia had already snatched the paper from Derek’s hands and was carefully examining the symbol. “There are letters here, but I can’t make them out.” Her frustration was evident. “Stiles, do you know what language this is?”

Stiles stood to look over her shoulder and felt himself sway on the spot as he finally got a good look at the paper, all the blood seeming to drain from his face instantaneously. Derek moved as though to physically steady Stiles but ended up just hovering beside him while Stiles clutched at Lydia’s shoulder for support instead. 

“Dude, your heartbeat is going crazy,” Scott said with concern. 

Stiles took a calming breath. “Definitely a warning,” he croaked out around the terror rising in his throat. “It’s Romanian, it means ‘alone you are weak.’”

“Well that’s stupid,” Lydia scoffed. “Derek isn’t alone, he has a pack.”

“It’s not a warning for him.”

“Who’s it for then?” Scott asked. 

Stiles bit down on his tongue hard enough to draw blood before answering. “Me.”

They were all talking over each other, the cacophony of concerned voices fading to the background of Stiles’ awareness as he ran his fingers over the paper. He traced the familiar lines of the Dacian Draco–-a serpent with a wolf’s head, its jaws open in a neverending howl-–and felt the matching burn mark on his lower back flare with phantom pain. Derek held a hand up for silence and then turned back toward Stiles. 

“How do you know?” he demanded.

“It’s the symbol of a pack I spent some time with in Romania during my gap year,” Stiles said vaguely. “Seems like they followed me here.”

Derek’s stare was heavy and unwavering. “Why are they here?”

“I don’t know,” Stiles said honestly. “But probably nothing good. I can meet with them and see…” He tried not to betray how unappealing that option was for him, but Derek seemed to pick up on it anyway.

“No,” the alpha said firmly. “I don’t want any of us engaging with them until we know what their objective is, or at least how many of them there are. We can start patrols again, observation only.”

Stiles let the pack discuss strategy around him while he continued to stare down at the paper that was still clutched tightly in his hand. He felt like he was floating high above the others, looking down on all the activity with detached resignation. They had finally come for him. 

***

The pack spent the next week on high alert, utilizing the buddy system whenever they had to leave town. Despite their daily patrols, they hadn’t yet caught a single trace of any other werewolves. Derek had done his best to interrogate Stiles about the mysterious visiting pack, but Stiles patently refused to talk about it. 

“I just can’t,” he said for what felt like the millionth time.

“That’s not good enough,” Derek growled.

“Too bad.”

There was a long pause on the other end before Derek said, “I’m coming to your house.”

Stiles heard the beep that signalled the end of the call and sighed as he put his phone down. 

Derek was at the house in minutes, pulling himself gracefully through Stiles’ bedroom window like it was something he did every day. Stiles didn’t look up at him, instead glaring down at his open laptop.

“The note said you’re weak because you’re alone,” Derek said without preamble.

“So?” Stiles asked impatiently.

“It doesn’t make sense. They left it on my car, so they know you have a pack. They know you’re not alone.”

“That’s not what they mean,” Stiles said.

“Then what do they mean?”

“They’re not saying I’m weak because I’m alone, they’re saying I’m weak because I’m not with them,” Stiles explained reluctantly.

Derek sat down heavily on Stiles’ bed, the old box spring creaking under his weight. “I don’t understand.”

Stiles sighed. “They’re a very old pack, descended from ancient Dacian wolf warriors. They have this motto, it basically translates to ‘the strong are stronger together, the weak are weaker alone.’” Stiles studied the floor carefully. “They’re saying that I’m weak without them.”

“And you believe them?” Derek asked incredulously, correctly guessing at the underlying shame that Stiles hadn’t vocalized.

Stiles shook his head resolutely. “Don’t,” he warned. 

“Why won’t you tell me anything?” Derek asked angrily. 

Stiles put his head in his hands. “I can’t have this conversation with you, Derek. Please.”

When he looked up again, the werewolf was gone. 

***

Derek managed to eke out a few more details from Stiles over several painfully terse conversations, though none of it even came close to resembling the full story. Stiles knew he should tell Derek everything he could about Alex and Nicolae and the Dacian pack, but he still couldn’t bring himself to do it. He’d worked so hard to pretend it had never happened-–after his gap year and then again after he returned to Romania over winter break–-that the mere idea of having to acknowledge it made him spiral into a panic attack.

Stiles did notice that Derek’s distinctive Camaro was parked at the end of his street more often than not over the next couple of weeks, but the alpha didn’t say anything to him about the new personal protective detail. Unfortunately, Derek’s presence did little to stave off the terrors that plagued most of Stiles’ nights.

_Nicolae prowled towards him as Stiles tugged fruitlessly at the chains that bound him, his wrists already stinging and bloody from the too-tight handcuffs. They’d done something to him to suppress his magic, but he couldn’t remember what. Why couldn’t he remember?_

_“Now, now, dragul meu. You know better than to fight.”_

_Nicolae was coming closer, still hovering just at the edge of Stiles’ vision. He tried to twist himself around to see the werewolf–-to see what was coming for him, to fight back in the only way he could–-but his head was being held in place by something that pricked into his neck when he moved too much. He tried to call his magic to the surface and was met only with an unending void. This was where he would die._

_Stiles let the realization sweep over him in a relentless wave, the certainty of his own impending death seeping into his bones with heavy resignation. He thought of the way his father had looked at his mom’s funeral, hungover and empty, and wondered if that’s what he would like at Stiles’ funeral too. Maybe, with his wife and son both gone, the Sheriff would just put a bullet in his brain and be done with it._

_Stiles saw Scott’s future spreading out before him: taking over Deaton’s practice, marrying Allison in a beautiful spring ceremony, their kids bounding around the backyard and getting into the same low-stakes mischief that Stiles and Scott used to before that night in the woods. He resigned himself to being just another bedtime story–-_ and your uncle Stiles, he was a real troublemaker…

_Stiles’ last thought was of Derek. Beautiful, closed off Derek, who might never recover from losing yet another person in his life. Derek, hovering just out of Stiles’ reach behind the brick walls they’d built up for themselves._

_And then Nicolae was stepping into the light, and the vision of Derek’s red eyes was replaced by two deep black holes that poured blood from where Nicolae’s eyes should have been. Red droplets painted the concrete near Stiles’ feet like a disturbing Jackson Pollock painting and the werewolf was close enough that he could smell the coppery scent of the blood that slicked down his face. Stiles heard distant screaming, and he knew that death had finally come for him._

“Stiles! Stiles, wake up!” His dad was jerking him awake, his green-blue eyes frantic when they met Stiles’ groggy gaze. Stiles’ throat was raw, and he realized that he’d been echoing the scream from his nightmare in real life. He fumbled for the glass of water at his bedside and took a few long gulps, his dad’s hand heavy where it still rested on his shoulder.

“Son–”

“I’m okay,” Stiles cut him off before his dad could put words to the concerned expression on his face. John frowned but seemed to decide not to press the issue.

“You know I’m here, if you want to talk about it.”

Stiles ducked his head, tracing a finger slowly around the rim of his water glass. “There’s nothing to talk about.”

John snorted. “You’ve always been the worst liar, kid.”

***

It took Stiles longer than he wanted to admit to ask himself the all-important question: how did the Dacian pack find him in Beacon Hills?

By the time it occurred to him to wonder, it was five in the morning and a full two weeks after Derek had found the note. Stiles was calling Lucja before he even thought to calculate the time difference between California and the small town outside of Warsaw where she lived. He had stayed with the elderly witch for about a month during his gap year, and she was the one who’d originally drawn up the protection wards that were now inked onto his skin.

There was no way the Dacian pack should have been able to track him across the ocean to Beacon Hills, not unless something was either seriously wrong with the wards or seriously wrong with the witch who cast them. Either alternative was frightening, and Stiles dialed Lucja’s number with trembling fingers.

“Alo?”

“Lucja?”

“Eh, Stiles! How are you, my lupul mic?”

“I’m okay, I’m home in California, but we have some surprise visitors.”

Stiles could hear Lucja’s inventive cursing from the other end of the phone, and if he wasn’t so concerned he would’ve laughed.

“My magic is holding,” she said when she’d calmed down marginally. “Has your skin been damaged recently? Maybe the physical markings are broken.”

Stiles thought for a moment, moving to stand in front of his full-length mirror and inspect the dark ink that traced across his torso. He pressed lightly on the still-healing scar from the omega attack and grimaced at the clear break it had caused in one of the outer edges of his tattoo. Dropping the hem of his t-shirt back down to cover his mottled skin, Stiles spoke into his phone again.

“Yeah I think one of the lines was broken when I got...scratched, a few weeks ago.” 

Lucja tsked at him disapprovingly. “If it was enough to break the marking, it was more than a scratch. What have I told you about taking care of yourself?”

Stiles sighed deeply, not at all in the mood for one of Lucja’s well-meaning but insufferable grandmotherly lectures. “If I can tattoo back over it, will it work again?”

“Yes, but it will need to be as dark as the original and you must follow the line exactly.”

Stiles was already at his computer and in the process of booting it up when he thanked Lucja, promised to call again soon, and hung up.

An hour and many reddit threads later, Stiles had a functioning tattoo machine assembled using a pen, the motor from his dad’s electric razor (he’d really need to apologize for that later), a needle, some paper clips, a battery, and a considerable amount of duct tape. As he was burning ash for the ink, Stiles realized there was no way he could give himself the tattoo; his hands may be steady around a weapon, but he hadn’t taken his Adderall in over 24 hours and the adrenaline coursing through his system was sending shivers up and down his arms.

Not for the first time, Stiles found himself cursing his stupid hyperactive brain. The only person who Stiles could think of who might be awake–-and who he trusted to tattoo potentially life-saving wards permanently onto his body–-was Derek. He sighed as he gathered up his DIY tattoo gun and ink and headed to the loft. 

By the time he was knocking on Derek’s door, Stiles felt like he was about to jump out of his own skin with fear and anxiety; now that he knew the wards were broken he couldn’t shake the uncomfortable feeling that he was being watched. Derek opened the door looking at least somewhat alert, which Stiles decided to take as a positive sign. The alpha looked at Stiles, who was practically vibrating with energy, and then down at the odd assortment of items he was clutching to his chest. He sighed and wordlessly stepped aside so that Stiles could enter the apartment. 

“So,” Stiles said abruptly. “I kind of need you to tattoo me. Like, right now.”

Derek blanched. “What?”

“You know how I have those tattoos? They’re actually like protection wards, but now they’re broken because I got clawed by that stupid omega and I need you to redraw them. Or re-tattoo them, I guess. I’d do it myself, but my hands are shaking too badly and Lucja–-she’s like, my Polish witch grandma–-said it needs to follow the original line exactly or it won’t work,” Stiles said in a rush.

“You need me to _tattoo_ you?”

Stiles rolled his eyes. “Yes! I need you to trace back over one tiny line so that people can’t find me.”

Derek glared at him through narrowed eyes. “And by people, you mean…?”

Stiles fidgeted nervously, trying to determine how much he could say without getting into a conversation that he didn’t have the mental energy for. “I mean werewolves from the pack I told you about.”

Derek looked like he wanted to argue, but instead he just nodded and pulled out a bottle of bleach. As he started wiping down the kitchen island, Stiles made his way to the liquor cabinet and took a long swig out of the first bottle he grabbed. Derek glanced over at him judgmentally, but Stiles ignored him as he tried to dull his senses.

When Derek was done sanitizing the counter, Stiles hauled himself up onto it and pulled his shirt off in one fluid motion, then pointed to his DIY tattoo machine and ink. 

“It should work, just connect the paperclip to the end of the battery.”

Derek frowned at the contraption and dug a pen out of his pocket instead. “If it’s so important to get the line exactly right, shouldn’t I draw it out first?” 

Stiles just shrugged as Derek settled into a chair beside him. With the height of the table, Stiles’ ribs were right at Derek’s eye-level. He tried not to squirm as the alpha carefully eyed the tattoo and lightly traced the pen over the still-fresh scar from the omega’s claws. 

“This is going to hurt,” he warned. 

“Yeah, no shit,” Stiles snorted. He waved the liquor bottle that was still clutched tightly in his hand. “That’s what the whiskey is for.”

Derek looked at him disbelievingly, but he picked up the tattoo gun anyway and set to work redrawing the broken ward. He was hesitant at first, but just like when he’d stitched him up after the omega attack Stiles knew that Derek had been the right choice for this unusual task. His hands were unfailingly steady, his demeanor was calm enough to cut through some of Stiles’ own panic, and he was strong enough to keep Stiles from flinching just by pressing a single hand down onto his shoulder. 

It actually didn’t hurt as much as Stiles had expected–-whether it was the alcohol kicking in or his memories of far more painful experiences, Stiles was able to sit through the twenty minutes it took to sufficiently redraw the line without so much as a whimper. 

Derek sat back to examine the fresh ink, wiping away a few beads of Stiles’ blood with his thumb to get a better look at the ward. “It’s okay, I think.”

Stiles sighed in relief as he hopped off the counter and pulled his shirt back on. “Thank you, Derek. Seriously.”

“Are you going to tell me what all of this is about now?”

Stiles looked down at the floor. “What do you mean?”

Derek huffed in frustration. “Why do you have protection wards tattooed on you? Who are you being protected from?”

“I told you, it’s so that the Dacian pack can’t track me.”

Derek was full-on glaring at him now; Stiles almost appreciated the normalcy. “That’s not a real answer.”

“Oh, so I have to tell you everything?” It was an obvious deflection, and Derek rubbed a tired hand over his face. 

“You’ve got to give me something, Stiles. I–-we-–have to protect them.”

Stiles knew he was talking about the other pack members. “The Dacian pack only wants me.”

“You can’t know that for sure.”

“I. can’t. talk. about. it,” Stiles grit out.

Derek threw his hands up in frustration. “You keep saying that, but you won’t explain _why!”_

“It’s not something I’m proud of, okay!” Stiles clapped a hand over his mouth in genuine surprise; that was more than he’d planned to tell the alpha.

Derek’s tone turned gentle. “What do you mean?”

“I–” Stiles paused to collect himself. “I stayed with the pack for a few months when I was in Romania three years ago. They offered me the bite.”

“So did we,” Derek pointed out.

“I almost took it,” Stiles said quietly. He gathered his courage and looked over at the alpha, but Derek’s face didn’t betray any emotion at the revelation that Stiles had nearly chosen to leave him and the rest of his life in Beacon Hills behind.

“They want you to go back with them then,” Derek stated calmly after a long moment of silence.

Stiles shook his head. “I wasn’t lying to you when I said I don’t know what they want.”

“Why else would they have come all the way here?”

“To fuck with me some more?” Stiles said it sarcastically, not paying close enough attention to his own word choice.

“What?” Derek questioned sharply.

Stiles pressed his lips together into a firm line and stared down at the floor, determined not to reveal anything else.

“Just…” Derek sighed, seeming to give up. “You can take a nap on the couch,” he finally said, gesturing to the living room. 

Stiles could feel all of the adrenaline bleeding out of his system, leaving him more exhausted and strung out with each step he took toward the inviting-looking sofa. 

“Thanks,” he mumbled as he all but collapsed onto the couch. He was asleep before his head hit the cushion.

_Stiles was back in the cell, dangling from the chains that had started to feel like extensions of himself. He could sense Nicolae’s presence, a dark evil emanating from somewhere behind him, but the werewolf was quiet. Stiles could do nothing but wait for him to enact whatever new form of torture he’d come up with since his last visit. Phantom touches from the last time Nicolae sought him out prickled against Stiles’ skin, tracing burning paths down his shoulders, arms, sides...He shuddered violently at the memory and felt the spikes pressed against his neck reopen old wounds._

_The room was suddenly flooded with blinding light–-Stiles couldn’t remember when he’d last seen such brightness. He shut his eyes reflexively to protect against it, and when he managed to open them again Derek was standing in front of him, his eyes a vibrant and angry red as he struggled to free Stiles from the restraints. Stiles could feel Nicolae moving toward Derek._

_“No! No, Derek! Leave me!” He tried to shout the warning but could only gurgle wordlessly, torrents of his own blood bubbling up past his lips. He looked down, straining against his chains, and saw mangled flesh where his chest had been. His eyes locked on Derek’s and he knew they were the last thing he’d ever see. Acceptance settled over him like a warm blanket._

Stiles was being shaken awake for the second time in less than a week. He blinked up confusedly into Derek’s hazel eyes and tried not to think about the red eyes from his nightmare.

“I’m fine,” he said before Derek could ask.

“You were yelling my name.”

He tilted his head toward Derek and noticed the slight flush that was spreading across the other man’s cheeks. Stiles felt a rush of mortification that he hadn’t experienced since high school as he realized what he must’ve sounded like, calling out Derek’s name in his sleep.

“Oh, god! No! It wasn’t, like, a _good_ dream,” he flailed his hands around wildly, sitting up fully now. “Not that you’re not–” he gestured wordlessly at Derek, and the alpha raised an eyebrow questioningly. Stiles threw his head into his hands, willing himself to stop talking. 

“Nightmare,” he finally mumbled to the floor. “It was just a nightmare.”

He felt the werewolf sit down on the couch beside him, close enough that Stiles could feel the heat radiating off of him.

“Do you get those a lot?” Derek asked gruffly.

Stiles shrugged, still unwilling to look over at the other man. “Sometimes.”

He knew Derek could hear the lie in his heartbeat; it wasn’t ‘sometimes,’ it was every night. 

“Stiles,” Derek started, but Stiles was saved from the impending lecture-slash-fight when Erica pushed open the door to the loft with her typical force. Derek honest-to-god jumped at the sound of the door slamming back on its hinges, and Stiles would have enjoyed the alpha’s uncharacteristic lack of vigilance had he not been the cause of it.

“Good morning, assholes!” Erica sang, already making her way to the coffee machine in the kitchen. She paused behind the counter, examining Stiles’ makeshift tattoo gun that they’d left next to the coffee pods. “Are we doing prison tats, now?”

“No,” Derek snarled just as Stiles gave an enthusiastic “Yes!”

Derek glared at him, but Stiles just smiled and joined Erica in the kitchen, happy for an escape from the weird tension that had settled between him and Derek on the couch. Erica looked over at him from where she was pulling down mugs from the cabinet over the sink, wrinkling her nose at his mussed hair and rumpled sweats. 

“Did you sleep here?” she asked him curiously, turning to give him her full attention.

Stiles waved aside the question. “Nah, just took a nap.”

She glanced pointedly over at the whiskey, which was sitting half-empty beside the tattoo machine. 

“For the pain,” he explained, pulling up his shirt on one side to show her the red, puckered skin around his repaired wards.

“So we _are_ doing prison tats?” she asked excitedly. Stiles laughed when Derek growled threateningly at them from the couch.


	3. Nicolae

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> CW: minor OC character death, mild gore
> 
> dragul meu: my darling (Romanian)  
> sica: a short sword or large dagger of ancient Thracians, Dacians and Illyrians  
> strzyga: a female demon from Slavic mythology, somewhat like a vampire

Things came to a head two days after Derek repaired Stiles’ wards.

Stiles let the note dangle between two of his fingers as if it was a bomb about to detonate. It had been waiting for him on the Jeep when he left the library, folded neatly and tucked under one of the windshield wipers. He would have dismissed it as just another junk flyer if it weren’t for the familiar red seal stamped prominently on the outside: the Dacian Draco, same as the warning that Derek had received just weeks previously. Stiles unfolded the paper with shaking hands and shuddered when he recognized the Romanian handwriting immediately.

_Dragul meu,_

_I have your red-eyed wolf. Do you remember the feeling of my claws as they tore into your pretty flesh so many moons ago? I am excited to see if he lasts longer than you did._

_Love,_

_N_

Stiles cursed as he pulled out his phone, punching the third contact in his speed dial with such ferocity that he was surprised the screen didn’t crack.

“They took Derek.”

***

Stiles paced around the loft as Scott and Isaac settled in on the couch. It was unfortunate that the others had all chosen to tour grad schools in LA that weekend, but it wouldn’t have made a difference to Stiles if he was the last person in Beacon Hills-–with the way he felt at the moment, he would've welcomed the chance to take on an entire pack of werewolves alone. 

“Stiles, what’s going on?” Scott looked up at him with his big brown eyes. Stiles turned sharply to face his best friend and stood so still that even a werewolf wouldn’t have been able to hear him fidget. 

“It’s bad.”

“Just tell us,” Isaac prompted.

“There’s a werewolf named Nicolae.” Stiles pressed his fists to his eyes briefly. “I met him in Romania. He’s...he’s not good. Definitely not friendly.”

Scott looked at him curiously. “Why’d he take Derek?”

“He wants to lure me in, I think.”

“If he wants to get to you, why didn’t he just tell you where he is?” Isaac asked.

“He expects me to be able to find him. He won’t make it hard, we can probably pick up the scent from the grocery store.”

“How do you know that Derek was grocery shopping?”

Stiles shrugged. “Derek always goes grocery shopping on Tuesdays because they restock on Monday night. Does it matter?”

“I guess not,” Isaac said and shook his head. “We don’t have any mountain ash left, we used the last of it for the omega. Derek ordered more, but it hasn’t come in yet…”

“It’s fine,” Stiles said. “I have a backup supply.”

“Do we even know how many of them there are?” Isaac asked.

“I’m pretty sure he’s alone. He wouldn’t have signed the note personally if he was here with the pack.”

Scott stood and clapped a hand on Stiles’ shoulder. “Are you sure it’s a good idea for you to come?”

Stiles glared at his best friend. _I could tear you apart with one hand,_ he wanted to say. Instead he said, “Nicolae took Derek because he wants _me,_ Scott. You’re crazy if you think I’m staying out of this.”

Scott examined his expression for a moment, taking in the determined rage that lurked just behind Stiles’ eyes.

“Alright then. Let’s go get Derek back.”

***

Stiles was right, it wasn’t hard to pick up the scent from the grocery store parking lot and follow it a few miles outside of town to an abandoned apartment building, where Scott brought them to a halt. 

“He’s definitely in there.”

Stiles nodded, and noticed something shiny glimmering against the dirty pavement beside the door. He stooped down to examine it and found a small pile of nails, the kind you would buy in bulk at a hardware store. Stiles furrowed his brow and–-oh. _Shit._ There was only one reason Nicolae would be using nails, and it wasn’t to hang pictures. Stiles took a deep breath, pocketed the nails, and stood up again to face Stiles and Isaac.

“Okay,” he said, trying to infuse his voice with as much authority as he could muster. “When we go in, stay by the door. I know this guy, so let me talk to him first. Hopefully they’ll be in the same room so you can get Derek out while I distract Nicolae.” 

Isaac and Scott both nodded their agreement easily, and Stiles turned to push open the lobby door. He paused for a second before adding, “And if you see any owls, be careful.”

They walked through the halls cautiously, doing their best to avoid disturbing the piles of trash and broken furniture that lined every wall as Scott used his nose to lead the way to Derek. They found what they were looking for in, of course, the creepy basement. They stopped outside the entrance to the boiler room, and Stiles had to push down the memories of the nogitsune that threatened to overwhelm him. He reminded himself that he was no longer a helpless high schooler with a void inside him; he’d trained for things far worse than this. 

Nodding to himself once in reassurance, Stiles pulled up his pant leg and unsheathed his hidden falx. It was a sturdy, curved sica, and he’d been taught to fight with it like it was an extension of his own body. Stiles ignored Scott’s confused stare as he twisted the weapon a few times in his hand, his heart singing with the familiar weight of it. 

He would never be helpless again.

Stiles cast a cursory glance around the dim room, swinging the lethally-sharp sica at his side aimlessly. To any outside observer, Stiles would appear entirely at ease; his face was a blank mask, his eyes dull as he took in the blood stains on the walls and Derek’s limp body strung up from the rafters.

Stiles looked up at the owl perched above Derek’s head with a disinterested expression. “You’re awfully far from home, aren’t you?”

The bird hooted in response, and Stiles turned around to direct his attention to the giant white wolf standing behind him. “Hello Nicolae.”

The wolf transformed instantly into a tall, dark haired man with glinting black eyes. “I wondered when you would come for him, Mieczyslaw. I must say, I expected you sooner.” The man spoke with a heavy accent, but Stiles had no trouble understanding him.

Stiles shrugged and dragged the curved metal tip of his sica lightly along the concrete wall beside him. Scott and Isaac cringed at the sound it made–-like nails on a chalkboard amplified a hundredfold–-but they remained quietly near the door as Stiles had instructed.

“You should have stayed in România, Nicu.”

The werewolf chuckled darkly. “I couldn’t let you slip through my fingers again, dragul meu. When I heard you were back here, I thought it was time I finally saw the place that you were so eager to return to.”

Stiles quirked an amused eyebrow in a rather good impression of Derek. “Oh? And what have you found?”

“Just as I expected from you, it is nothing special. Your pack–” he spat the word distastefully, “–is only a few weak cubs.”

Stiles smiled tightly in polite disagreement. “As always, you underestimate the things you don’t understand.”

Nicolae waved his hand unconcernedly. “I understand them perfectly. In the weeks that I have been here not a single one of them has shown any promise. Even your alpha was easy to take when I wanted him.” He gestured to where Derek was bound in chains, but Stiles stared resolutely at the werewolf in front of him, unwilling to look back at the injured alpha.

“It is you who I do not understand,” Nicolae continued. “Why leave _us,_ everything you could have been, for these pitiful creatures.”

Stiles rolled his eyes. “I don’t stay with people who kidnap and torture me, as a general rule.” He tried to ignore the pained gasp that Scott made from somewhere behind him.

Nicolae just laughed–-a horrible, high-pitched noise that echoed in the cavernous room.

“Why are you here alone, Nicolae?” Stiles asked, his patience wearing thin. 

“Why, to retrieve you for my lovely brother, of course. Have you never considered why we chose to take you last winter, after letting you go the first time?”

Stiles cocked his head to the side slightly, a small, vacant smile on his face as he motioned for Nicolae to explain. 

“When you left we all assumed you to be gone forever, so imagine my surprise when our betas saw you in Bucharest three years later. Alex still _wanted_ you, even after you ran from us. Do you understand? The spirits have chosen you for him, and we will hunt you until you are his.”

Scott stepped forward into the circle of light emanating from the single bare lightbulb, his eyes flashing and his claws clenched at his sides. “What does this Alex person want with Stiles? He already has a pack.”

Nicolae looked between Stiles and Scott in mild surprise. “You haven’t told your friends about your time with us?”

Stiles shrugged. “It wasn’t that memorable, to be honest.”

The werewolf clapped his hands together in feigned excitement. “Oh Mieczyslaw, you have been keeping secrets!” He turned toward Scott, his disgust for the younger man obvious in his expression. “Your friend has been marked as the mate of our high alpha since he left our pack three years ago. I’ve come to return him to his true home.”

Scott looked revolted and Isaac let out a soft whine. Derek, who had apparently regained consciousness at some point during the conversation, growled loudly from behind Stiles.

Scott nodded in agreement with Derek’s nonverbal assertion. “Your alpha can’t have Stiles! He’s ours,” he said firmly.

 _“You_ cannot do anything about it. You’re a child, and so is the rest of your pack.” Nicolae smirked. “Mieczyslaw belongs to my brother,” he said bitterly.

Stiles, who had been silent during the exchange, sighed loudly. “I’m getting a little tired of people acting like they can possess me. I do have some agency as, you know, a _person._ ”

“The rites–”

Stiles interrupted the werewolf with a wave. “Your rites don’t mean anything to me. I’m not going back with you, now or ever. Alex can suck his own dick for all I care.”

Nicolae cracked his neck threateningly. “Well then I suppose this is the end. My brother will be disappointed when he hears I’ve killed you, but no doubt he’ll forget about you before your body is even cold.”

Stiles swung his sica up into an offensive position in front of him. “You always were the most annoying motherfucker. I’ll enjoy finally getting to tear you limb from limb.” His face twisted up into a violent smile.

Nicolae made an odd whistling noise and the owl that had been perched in the rafters above dove down at them, transforming into a demonic creature just before hitting the ground. It was a truly disgusting monster: hunched over with pointed ears and yellow, protruding fangs. The curve of its scaled torso was vaguely feminine, and Stiles thought he could almost see the shadow of the human being it used to be. Then it snarled loud enough to make the hairs on the back of Stiles’ neck stand up, and any resemblance it had to a person vanished instantly. 

Stiles rolled his eyes at Nicolae. “Really, Nicu? A strzyga? I would’ve thought them beneath you.”

Nicolae looked at his monster companion with mild revulsion. “It wasn’t my first choice,” he admitted as he lunged forward, his claws and fangs extended toward Stiles. Scott shouted in concern but Stiles only grinned as he sidestepped the attack, jabbing an elbow into the werewolf's side as he twisted out of reach. Scott and Isaac stood temporarily frozen as they watched Stiles and Nicolae fight in a flurry of movement, Stiles holding his own as he jabbed and parried easily.

“The strzyga!” Stiles shouted to them as he blocked yet another attack.

Scott and Isaac turned in unison to focus on the horrifying creature that was quickly advancing toward them, its movements oddly disjointed as though its body parts had been stitched together by someone in too much of a hurry to do the job properly. Scott roared as he flung himself at the monster, sinking his claws deep into its abdomen. Its flesh ripped open but no blood spilled out of the open wound; its skin was left flapping sickeningly over the exposed rotted tissue as it continued to move forward with ease.

“What the hell?” Scott exclaimed.

Suddenly the strzyga gave an ear-bleeding screech, pausing in its advance as it frantically tore at its own back in obvious pain. Stiles smiled wickedly, one of his hands filled with nails that he was quickly throwing at the monster even as he continued to fight with Nicolae. He tossed another one with deadly precision and the strzyga screamed again as the nail lodged itself in its shoulder blade. 

“You have to decapitate it and move the head as far away as poss–” Stiles was cut off mid-word when Nicolae finally managed to claw a deep line into his side, shredding through cloth and skin like butter.

Stiles hissed in pain and anger, turning his full attention back to the werewolf in front of him. “Fuck you, asshole, this is my favorite hoodie!” Stiles used the blunt end of the sica to bludgeon Nicolae over the head, and the werewolf fell to the ground in surprise. “Embedded with yellow wolfsbane, fuckface.”

Nicolae opened his mouth to respond, but Stiles temporarily silenced him with a sharp kick to the face. 

He took the opportunity to hurl half a dozen more nails at the strzyga, trusting Scott to keep himself out of the throwing path. Out of the corner of his eye Stiles could see Isaac unchaining a furious-looking Derek, and he spared a second to make eye contact with the newly-freed werewolf. Stiles smirked at Derek as he tossed his sica to his other hand and then looked back at Nicolae, who was struggling to his feet.

“I’m offended, really, Nicu. Have you forgotten already? Cezar trained me left-handed.”

Nicolae paled a little, but recovered with a warrior’s grace. “It doesn’t matter which hand you use, you and your friends won’t be leaving here today.”

Stiles laughed as though the wolf had told a particularly funny joke. “I do love confidence in a man. It’s too bad you’ll never be anything but a pathetic little boy.”

Nicolae snarled and leaped forward, his fangs snapping at Stiles’ neck. But Stiles was already stepping back, swinging his sica in a deadly arc in front of him. The blade just barely nicked his skin, but the werewolf howled in pain as he stumbled backwards. 

Stiles quickly brought the handle of the sica down to his thigh and smashed it open painfully against his own leg. He shook loose a few splinters of broken wood and reached inside the small cavity hidden inside the handle to retrieve the tiny bag of emergency mountain ash, ripping it open and promptly throwing the contents at Nicolae.

 _I believe, I believe, I believe,_ Stiles chanted silently to himself. The ash settled around the werewolf, quickly forming an invisible cage as Stiles bent it to the will of his magic. Nicolae roared thunderously as he realized what was happening, and Stiles slunk towards him like a lion stalking its prey. He knelt beside the werewolf, confident that the barrier would hold. 

“Aw, is poor little Nicu trapped? How does it feel, dickhead?”

Nicolae merely growled back at him.

“Nothing to say to me now?” Stiles pressed a hand dramatically to his chest. “After all that we’ve shared?” 

He grinned crazily at the werewolf who had haunted his nightmares. “I told you I would enjoy tearing your limbs off. Which would you like me to start with, _dragul meu?”_

A light touch on Stiles’ shoulder had him jerking back before Nicolae could respond, twisting instinctively into a defensive position with his weapon at the ready. He narrowly avoided stabbing Derek in the stomach, but the man stood his ground as he stared down Stiles. He was still bleeding from the open cuts along his exposed torso and he was stooped slightly as though his spine was working to repair itself, but he still managed to cast an intimidating figure with his arms crossed tightly over his bare chest and his eyes flashing red.

“Just end it, Stiles.”

Stiles shook his head and laughed mirthlessly. “He doesn’t deserve mercy.”

Derek continued to stare intensely into his eyes. “No he doesn’t,” he said simply.

Stiles held his gaze for another moment that felt like an eternity, trying to puzzle through his own anger and bloodlust while he faltered under Derek’s heavy stare. At last he sighed and turned away from Derek.

“Don’t watch,” Stiles said, and for the first time since he’d read Nicolae’s note his voice betrayed something other than cold, controlled rage.

Without another word, Stiles sliced his sica through Nicolae’s throat in one clean stroke. Stiles felt a deep satisfaction as he watched the werewolf’s eyes flicker uncontrollably between red and black, the life slowly bleeding out of them while he choked on his own blood. He knelt beside the dying man. 

“The weak are always weaker alone, Nicolae.”

When at last the werewolf was completely still, his eyes forever frozen a depthless black, Stiles stood and took a few long strides over to where Scott and Isaac were still struggling with the strzyga. He decapitated it from behind before it even heard him coming, his sica still dripping with Nicolae’s blood, and the monster’s head rolled across the floor.

Stiles pulled a lighter from his back pocket and flicked it open, holding the flame to the waxy skin of the now headless monster and quickly stepping back as it ignited immediately in green flames. The four men stood transfixed by the oddly-colored fire as the monster burned away to ash within seconds. 

“Well,” Stiles said when the flames subsided. “I could go for some curly fries.”

The others stared at him in mild shock as he casually wiped the blade of his sica clean on his now-ruined hoodie and resheathed his weapon. When no one said anything in response, Stiles simply shrugged and got to work wrapping the dead werewolf’s body in a large tarp that someone had conveniently left behind in the abandoned basement.

***

They did end up stopping at the diner on the way home, mostly because Stiles was the one driving and he was pulling into the parking lot before the others could protest. He tossed a spare t-shirt to Derek and exchanged his own bloodied hoodie for the emergency black sweatshirt that he kept in the back of the Jeep.

Derek motioned to the deep claw marks on Stiles’ side. “Isn’t that going to be a problem?”

Stiles shook his head, already halfway across the parking lot. “Nah. Nicolae was technically an alpha, but he didn’t have the power to turn anyone. Curly fries first then I’ll patch myself up when I get home.”

“There’s a dead body in your car,” Derek hissed.

“Yeah,” said Stiles in his best no-duh voice. “And it’ll still be there after we’ve eaten.”

He could practically feel Derek’s glare boring into the back of him, but he paid it no mind as he pushed open the door to the old diner and settled into one of the cracked vinyl booths near the back. If anyone noticed that he took the seat that gave him the clearest view of the exits, they didn’t say anything.

Scott waited until they’d gotten their food to speak. “Are you okay, man?”

Stiles shoveled a few fries into his mouth. “‘M fine,” he mumbled around the mouthful of carbs. 

His best friend looked unconvinced, his own food for once untouched in front of him. He leaned across the table to whisper, “You just killed that guy. There’s no way you’re fine.”

Stiles shrugged and chewed on the end of his straw nonchalantly. “It’s not like he was a good person. He’s just an asshole who finally got what was coming to him.”

“Yeah, but you still killed him.” Scott leaned back, staring at Stiles as though he didn’t recognize him. “You killed him like it was nothing.”

Stiles straightened in his seat, the food before him temporarily forgotten as he glared obstinately at his friend. “I’m not going to apologize for killing him, if that’s what you’re looking for. I did what needed to be done.”

“You already had him trapped, you didn’t actually have to _kill_ him,” Scott insisted.

“What would’ve happened if I’d let him go? He was going to kill you and then drag me back to that fucking hellhole. I had to do it.” Stiles prayed that they didn’t pick up on the lie in his stuttering heartbeat. He tossed his napkin over his food, his appetite suddenly gone, and shouldered Derek out of the booth ahead of him.

Scott caught up with him in the parking lot, his expression open and concerned. “This isn’t you, Stiles.”

Stiles gave a small, humorless laugh. “You don’t know me, Scott.”

“I know you’re a good person!” he exclaimed, eyes bright.

“No, you really don’t.”

They stared at each other for a long moment, and Stiles had never felt farther away from his best friend.

***

Derek and Stiles stood over the fresh grave that they’d dug for Nicolae. Stiles looked down at it for a moment unfeelingly and then bent down to press his hand to the earth. He pushed a bit of his magic into the ground and little wolfsbane saplings slowly began to sprout up from the mound of fresh dirt. Stiles stroked one of his fingers gently over the sprouting leaves.

“I’ve always thought they were kind of pretty,” he mused, mostly to himself.

Derek snorted above him. “Only you would find beauty in something poisonous.”

Stiles straightened, noticing with a start that he and Derek were about the same height now. “I’m a murderer, remember? It’s fitting.”

“You’re not a murderer,” Derek said, frowning at him. “You said it yourself, you did what needed to be done. Scott knows that.”

“Scott likes to think the best of people,” Stiles corrected. “I don’t mind that, normally. His incessant optimism and naivete are what make him Scott, you know? Sometimes I just feel like he sees me as something I’m not.” _Something better than I am,_ Stiles added silently. 

Derek stared at him intently, but Stiles couldn’t quite bring himself to look back at him; revealing even the smallest hint of his true thoughts left him feeling exposed and vulnerable.

“You’re not a murderer,” Derek repeated simply.

Stiles wasn’t sure he agreed with him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is the first chapter I wrote for this fic (specifically the "rescuing Derek" scene) and it's still my favorite part tbh


	4. Intervention

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> CW: brief description of torture (skip the italicized section at the beginning if you'd prefer not to read)

_Everything was dark except for the single flame burning in the corner of the crude room. He was too weak to lift his head but he could see the twisting reflection of fire in the small puddle of water at his feet-–was that his own urine or just the damp of the cave? Stiles wasn’t sure._

_Nicolae was there, standing over the flame and muttering incoherently. “Alex wants you for himself, the spirits think you’re his, always Alex…” Stiles couldn’t tell if he was talking to him or to himself, but he didn’t have the strength to respond regardless._

_Suddenly Nicolae’s face was just inches from his own, peering into his eyes with the sick glee that Stiles had grown accustomed to. He was holding something that Stiles couldn’t see. More knives?_

_“You’re mine,” Nicolae said, and this time he was definitely speaking to Stiles._

_Stiles tried to spit at him, but all he managed was a small trickle of drool that only added to the mess of dirt and blood already coating his own face. Nicolae laughed but moved away from him, disappearing back into the dark._

_Stiles had a brief moment of hopeful relief before his back exploded in a wave of heat and pain. He could feel the skin there burning; he was sure he could smell his own flesh as it sizzled under the hot iron. He would’ve given anything for the surrounding darkness to swallow him whole. He would’ve welcomed death like a friend if it meant not having to feel this anymore._

Stiles was pulled from his bed before he could grab the dagger that he’d tucked under his pillow. 

“What the fuck?” He was instantly alert, adrenaline coursing through his system as he was shifted over someone’s shoulder in a fireman’s carry. He kicked out instinctively at the person holding him, but whoever it was just grunted and promptly threw him out his own bedroom window. Stiles was suspended in a brief moment of stomach-twisting free fall before he was caught by a new pair of arms.

“Scott?”

Scott didn’t smile at him as he set him on his feet. “Hi Stiles.”

“What the hell is going on?”

“We’re taking you to Derek’s,” Scott said.

“Why?”

“You’ll see when you get there.”

Stiles thought about refusing, but then Boyd landed beside them on the grass and Stiles found himself outnumbered. He let himself be shoved into Lydia’s car, the strawberry blonde smiling at him grimly from the driver’s seat. 

“What are you doing here? I thought you were in LA,” Stiles asked confusedly. 

“Scott called us,” was all she said in response.

The ride to the loft was silent and tense. Stiles took deep breaths the whole way and tried to remind himself that these were his friends; they weren’t going to hurt him. _But you didn’t think Alex was going to hurt you either,_ the voice in his head said unhelpfully. 

Stiles was grateful when they finally pulled into the parking lot of Derek’s building and he could escape the claustrophobic confines of the car. He was less grateful when he found the entire pack waiting for them in the loft. He felt his heart pound heavily in his chest as he took in their somber faces.

“Did someone die?”

It was a fair question to ask in Beacon Hills, but a quick head count revealed that the pack remained intact. 

“No,” Scott said. “It’s an intervention.”

Stiles’ laugh died in his throat when everyone’s expressions remained dour. “Are you serious?”

No one answered him, but Lydia pushed him into a nearby chair.

“We’re concerned,” Allison said, not unkindly, as Scott joined her on the loveseat. 

“You’re concerned?” Stiles echoed. The others all nodded at him seriously. “About me?”

“Stiles, we knew something was wrong even before whatever happened tonight,” Lydia said sternly. “You didn’t come home for nearly a year, you’re on edge all the time, and Derek finally told us what you did to that omega.” She shot a dark glare at the alpha, but Derek’s eyes were trained on Stiles.

“And you killed the werewolf and whatever that...thing was tonight like it was nothing,” Scott added. “I know you said you’re fine, but that is not _normal,_ Stiles. Where did you even learn to do that?”

Stiles gave a short, incredulous laugh. “So instead of just asking me what was going on, you decided to kidnap me in the middle of the night for a full-team interrogation?”

Derek frowned. “Kidnapped you?” he asked, at the same time that Scott exclaimed, “you haven’t been answering any of our questions!”

Derek held up a hand to quiet Scott and repeated his question. “What do you mean they kidnapped you?”

Stiles rolled his eyes. “I mean Boyd broke into my house, literally threw me out the window, and shoved me into a car. How else should I describe it?”

Derek turned to Boyd with unadulterated fury on his face, his irises tinged with red. “What?”

“Scott told me to get Stiles but I couldn’t wake him up. So I just sort of picked him up,” Boyd explained calmly. 

Derek growled loudly enough that every wolf in the room cringed. “Scott,” he gritted out.

Stiles wasn’t even ashamed of how much he enjoyed the way that Scott cowered under the force of the alpha’s tone.

“I only wanted Boyd to wake him up.” Scott turned to look at Stiles with pleading eyes. “I swear, I didn’t know he was going to handle it like that. I didn’t think–”

Derek interrupted him before Stiles could. “You decided to send Boyd to get Stiles without telling him anything? You broke into his fucking house after everything we heard tonight?” Derek roared, his claws now fully extended. 

The alpha’s hissy fit only added to Stiles’ growing anger. “Don’t talk about me like I’m not standing right here,” he snapped. 

“Stiles, are they saying that you were kidnapped? By the wolf you killed tonight?” Allison asked in horror.

“Yeah,” Stiles said shortly. “Over winter break.”

Boyd looked genuinely distraught. “I’m so sorry, I didn’t know. I wouldn’t have…” Boyd paused in his apology, considering Stiles carefully. “You were having a nightmare, weren’t you? That’s why I couldn’t wake you up.”

Derek growled again, but Stiles shot him a glare of such intensity that he fell silent instantly. 

“Yes,” Stiles admitted, looking down at the floor so he didn’t have to see the expressions on his friends’ faces. “But it’s not a big deal, I’m _fine.”_

“You’re not fine,” Scott insisted. “When you were talking to that Nicolae guy you said he tortured you.”

“It was just an expression,” Stiles said defensively. 

Every werewolf in the room knew he was lying. Stiles could feel the walls closing in on him, the memories he’d worked so hard to bury beginning to resurface. So he turned on his heel and stormed out of the loft as quickly as possible, running from his problems like the coward he knew he was.

***

Derek found him sitting by the lake at the edge of the preserve, propped up against a tree and staring unseeingly out at the dark water before him. The alpha dropped to the ground next to him, cautious to keep some physical distance between them. Stiles could feel Derek’s intense gaze settle on him, but he didn’t look away from the surface of the lake. 

“Nicolae told me things, when he took me,” Derek said carefully, rolling the werewolf’s name around his tongue like it was poison. “Stiles, he told me about things that he did to you.” 

Derek’s voice was filled with pain and Stiles couldn’t bear to look at him.

“Are they true, the things he said?” Derek asked finally.

“How much did he tell you?”

Derek exhaled shakily and leaned back against the tree. “I’d hoped it wasn’t true.”

“Then you shouldn’t have asked,” Stiles said cuttingly.

“Why didn’t you tell me-–us?”

Stiles snorted. “How was I supposed to tell you? You all thought I was off on a research trip, how could I explain?”

“Then why didn’t you tell us three years ago when you met them the first time?” Derek demanded.

Stiles curled in on himself, drawing his knees to his chest and redirecting his gaze back out over the water. “You already know why.”

“All you told me was that the pack offered you the bite and you refused it.”

Stiles was grateful that Derek didn’t mention the part where he admitted that he’d almost said yes.

“While I was there, I was kind of...involved. With Alex.”

“Alex is their alpha?”

Stiles started at the question-–he’d almost forgotten that Derek didn’t actually know who Alex was. “Sort of. Alex is their high alpha, Nicolae is–-was-–one of the regular alphas.” Stiles cleared his throat. “Half the pack is alphas, all born wolves.”

Derek sucked in a breath. “Powerful.”

“Yeah. Nicolae wasn’t even the strongest of them. I once saw Cezar kill five werewolves single handedly.” 

It had been a training demonstration, one that still sometimes haunted Stiles’ dreams. Five feral wolves, tracked down and then let loose in a makeshift outdoor arena to be killed like fish in a barrel before the watching betas and Stiles. At the time, Stiles hadn’t thought of it as being particularly cruel; he’d been living with the pack for so long that he’d stopped questioning their methods. Now it made his stomach churn queasily just to think of it.

“Is he the one who taught you how to fight like that?”

“Him and Alex. I was the first human they’d ever trained alongside the wolves.” Stiles smiled wryly. “I’ve always been the special one, I guess.”

“Why did you go back for winter break, if you knew how dangerous they were?” Derek asked.

“I thought it had been long enough. As far as I knew, they hadn’t even missed me. And I thought I was strong enough not to go looking for them.” Stiles couldn’t quite keep the longing from his voice.

“You still want to go back to them, even after everything?” If Derek was angry at that prospect he didn’t show it; his expression was uncharacteristically open as he waited for Stiles’ answer.

“I don’t know,” Stiles admitted. “It’s hard to describe.”

“Try.”

Stiles rubbed at the back of his neck nervously. “They’re kind of like a gang, or maybe a cult. The training is intense and not exactly pleasant, but it builds you up into something stronger than you would have been on your own. And Alex…” Stiles trailed off, struggling to articulate his confused feelings. “Alex is the best of them. It’s hard not to love someone like that.”

There was a brief moment of silence as Derek mulled over his words. “You were strong before,” he said finally.

“What?” Stiles asked, bewildered.

“You said they made you stronger,” Derek echoed Stiles’ words back to him. “But you were already strong. And you were never on your own.”

They sat side by side, looking out over the water together as the sun rose. Stiles felt an unfamiliar contentment–-a quiet sense of peace–-settling deep into his bones. Derek didn’t ask him any more questions, but for the first time Stiles thought he wouldn’t mind answering them. 

“I don’t think I can tell the others,” he said, breaking the long silence.

Derek looked over at him. “You don’t have to,” he said simply. “But you know they’ll come for you again, and they’ll try to use us against you.”

“I know.”

“What do you want to do about it?”

Stiles shrugged. “Alex might not really care that I killed Nicolae. They’re brothers but they never got along, Nicolae was always so jealous of everything that Alex had. But…”

“But he’ll still come for you as his mate,” Derek finished for him when Stiles trailed off.

Stiles nodded miserably. Derek bumped their shoulders together gently. 

“We’ll figure it out,” he promised.


	5. Derek's Terrible Idea

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Previously:
> 
> “I don’t think I can tell the others,” he said, breaking the long silence.
> 
> Derek looked over at him. “You don’t have to,” he said simply. “But you know they’ll come for you again, and they’ll try to use us against you.”
> 
> “I know.”
> 
> “What do you want to do about it?”
> 
> Stiles shrugged. “Alex might not really care that I killed Nicolae. They’re brothers but they never got along, Nicolae was always so jealous of everything that Alex had. But…”
> 
> “But he’ll still come for you as his mate,” Derek finished for him when Stiles trailed off.
> 
> Stiles nodded miserably. Derek bumped their shoulders together gently. 
> 
> “We’ll figure it out,” he promised.

“Figuring it out” for Derek apparently meant calling Stiles at all hours of the day and night to bark questions at him about the Dacian pack: their strengths, their weaknesses, what they ate for breakfast. After two days of abrupt phone calls that forced Stiles to relive some of the worst memories of his life at random intervals, Stiles started inviting himself over to the loft for pseudo-strategy meetings–-at least that way he could contain his panic attacks to set windows of time.

They were hovering over the dining room table during one such meeting when Derek had his terrible idea. They’d been looking over what little information Stiles had been able to find on the Dacian pack’s mating traditions when Derek jabbed a finger at one of the scrawled bullet points.

“This says they can only claim someone who’s unmated,” he stated.

“Yeah, so?”

Derek rolled his eyes. “So if you’re already mated to an alpha, then Alex can’t claim you.”

Stiles frowned, reading over Derek’s shoulder. “I’m not actually sure that would apply, since technically he chose me when I was unmated. And I’m still unmated so it doesn’t really make much of a difference, does it?”

“You could be my mate.”

“What?” Stiles knew he probably looked incredibly dumb with his mouth gaping open, but he couldn’t seem to close it. 

“You can pretend to be my mate, and then we’ll have grounds to challenge Alex’s claim if they come for you again.”

Stiles tried to shove down the small, unexpected disappointment he felt at the word ‘pretend.’ “I doubt they’ll be willing to listen to reason considering I already killed one of their alphas. And if they figure out that we’re just pretending they’ll definitely kill us.”

“They might kill us anyway,” Derek pointed out. “At least this’ll give us a chance.”

“You honestly think we can fake something like that? You look like you hate me most of the time.”

Derek sighed. “I don’t hate you, Stiles.”

“Well _I_ know that,” Stiles replied. “I’m saying that it _looks_ like you can’t stand me.”

“I look like I hate everyone most of the time.” Derek glanced over at Stiles. “Or at least that’s what I’ve been told.”

Stiles mulled it over silently. Derek wasn’t wrong-–it would give them an advantage if they could convince the Dacian wolves that he already had an alpha as a mate. It was a big if, but they didn’t have much to lose.

“Okay,” Stiles said finally. “Mate me up, wolf boy.” 

Derek already looked like he was regretting his offer, and Stiles couldn’t really say he blamed him. “So,” he said quickly, “how’s this going to work?”

“You should probably move in here, it’ll help if you smell like me as much as possible.”

“Okay, I can do that. What do we tell the others?”

Derek frowned. “I don’t think we should tell them that it’s fake. If the Dacian pack does show up again it’ll be safer for them not to know.”

“Do you really think they’re going to buy that we’re a couple?” Stiles asked. 

Derek cast him a look that Stiles couldn’t decipher. “Yeah, I do.”

***

By the time he was halfway home, Stiles’ doubt over their plan had intensified to full-blown panic.

“Derek,” he said when the other man picked up the phone. “This is a horrible idea.”

Derek grunted. “You shouldn’t talk on the phone while you drive, Stiles.”

“I have hands-free,” he replied, waving one of his hands around as proof even though no one was there to see it. “This is a horrible idea,” he repeated.

“It’s not a horrible idea, it’s a strategy. And we don’t have any other alternatives.”

“Well that isn’t ominous at all,” Stiles snorted. “There is no way we can pull this off, none. No one would believe we’re a couple, you don’t even know anything about me.”

“Try me,” Derek said roughly.

“What?”

“Ask me something you think I should know about you.”

Stiles thought for a moment. “What’s my favorite color?”

“Red,” Derek responded immediately. “What’s my favorite color?”

“You pretend it’s black but it’s actually blue.” The answer was out before Stiles could even think about it. “But just because we know each other’s favorite colors doesn’t mean we can convincingly pretend to be in a relationship,” he added quickly.

“Okay, what do you think I need to know about you to be your pretend boyfriend?”

“I don’t know!” Stiles exclaimed in frustration. “My grandpa’s name, the best birthday present I’ve ever gotten, my biggest fear? Deep shit, Derek! Relationship stuff.”

“Elias, the Jeep, not being able to protect the people you care about.” Derek rattled off the answers in quick succession. “Or spiders,” he tacked on for good measure.

Stiles huffed angrily and was quiet for a moment. He listened to Derek’s breathing on the other end of the phone and let its steady rhythm calm him. “You’re sure we can do this?”

“Yes,” Derek said firmly. 

Stiles pulled into his driveway and pinched the bridge of his nose tightly. “Fuck, I’m about to have the most uncomfortable conversation of my life.”

Derek’s laugh broke off abruptly when Stiles added, “He might shoot you.”

The Sheriff didn’t end up shooting Derek, but it was the most uncomfortable conversation of Stiles’ life.

“So,” was all he managed to say before John was groaning and grabbing a beer from the fridge. “You don’t even know what I’m going to say!” Stiles protested.

“I know it’s not good,” John replied evenly, popping open the tab as he settled into his chair at the kitchen table. Stiles sat down across from him and looked down at his hands, his leg bouncing erratically.

“Spit it out, kid,” John said, kicking his son lightly under the table. 

Stiles ran his sweaty palms over his thighs. “Um, okay. So, I’m moving out.”

John furrowed his brow. “Are you going back to Stanford early? I thought you were good to stay until September.” The twinge of hurt in his dad’s voice twisted Stiles’ heart into knots.

“No!” he said quickly. “I’m not leaving Beacon Hills, I’ll still be around.” He paused, taking a deep breath. “I’m moving in with Derek.”

John nodded as though his only child hadn’t just dropped a massive bomb on him. “I guess you’re always going over there for pack stuff anyway, and god knows that kid’s got enough spare rooms.”

Stiles cleared his throat uncomfortably. “Ah-–no, Dad. It’s not for pack stuff. And I probably won’t be staying in a spare room.”

John looked confused for a moment before realization dawned on him. “Oh.”

“I know it seems sudden, but it’s just that I don’t have that much time with him until I have to go back to school, you know?” Stiles made up the explanation on the spot.

“It doesn’t seem that sudden, actually,” John said thoughtfully after a long moment of tense silence.

“What?”

“Well you have been spending a lot of time with Derek this summer and I’m not blind, I know he comes over when I’m not home sometimes.”

“You’re not upset?” Stiles asked incredulously.

“Do you want me to be upset?”

“No, of course not. I’m just...surprised, that’s all.” Stiles tried desperately to ignore the fact that his dad had basically just given him his blessing to date Derek Hale–-no, to _move in with_ Derek Hale.

John laughed. “Stiles, you’re 22 years old. I’m not going to tell you who to date or who to live with. Besides, I like Derek well enough. Wait,” he turned sharply to examine his son. “Nothing happened when you were underage, right?”

Stiles rolled his eyes. “As if Derek would’ve even looked at me when I was in high school.”

John nodded, satisfied. “Alright then. There are boxes in the garage.”

***

“He didn’t even threaten to bring out his gun,” Stiles complained as Derek helped him lift the last of his boxes out of the Jeep.

“And that’s a bad thing?”

“No,” Stiles grunted under the weight of a plastic tub full of books. “It’s a _weird_ thing. This is my dad we’re talking about: Sheriff of the BHPD, proud card-carrying member of the Beacon Hills gun club.”

“So you want him to shoot me?” Derek asked as he pressed the elevator call button. 

“No, I want him to threaten to shoot you. There’s a difference.”

Derek glanced over at him, looking unfairly perfect for someone who’d just done a solid hour of manual labor in the hot California sun. “It’s a good thing that he believed it so easily, it means everyone else will too.”

Stiles sighed and wiped a bead of sweat off his brow. “How are we going to tell the pack?”

“I already invited everyone over for a movie night tonight, we can do it then.”

Stiles set down his final box in Derek’s bedroom, turning in a small circle to observe the space. It was a large room, with a lush king-sized bed and a cozy little reading nook in the corner. Everything in the room was surprisingly warm and bright–-none of the hard industrial lines that pervaded the rest of the loft’s decor. It was exactly the kind of room that Stiles would’ve picked for himself, albeit much cleaner and with fewer Star Wars posters on the walls.

Derek had already cleared space for Stiles in the dresser and on the shelf in the ensuite, and it took almost no time at all for him to find spots for the relatively few belongings he’d brought with him. By the time he was finished stacking his books in a messy pile beside the bed, it looked as though Stiles had always lived there.

Derek surveyed the completed room, his expression stoic. “It’s already starting to smell like you.” 

***

Derek had obviously told the rest of the pack to back off, and Stiles was relieved that they didn’t use movie night as an opportunity to attempt a second intervention. Scott even came over twenty minutes early just to grovel for forgiveness.

“I know there’s something going on with you, but I promise I’ll stop prying,” he said. “I just want you to know that you can talk to me when you want to, and I’ve got your back no matter what.”

Stiles had always been powerless to resist those big, earnest eyes. “It’s okay,” he reassured his best friend, who looked so relieved that Stiles couldn’t help but laugh a little bit. “Anyway, who else would be dumb enough to be your best man?”

Scott grinned back at him. “You’re gonna have to teach me how to fight like that, by the way.”

“Are you jealous of my mad skills, Scotty?”

The conversation quickly devolved into play fighting and Stiles was happy to have his best friend back, although Derek still looked a little angrier than usual at his beta.

***

Stiles didn’t taste a single bite of his pizza, too busy worrying about how they were going to tell the pack that he and Derek were (pretend) dating. Derek pulled Stiles onto the loveseat beside him when they moved into the living room to start the movie and Stiles felt his gut tighten in anticipation, but before Derek could put whatever plan he had into motion Erica took matters out of their hands. She’d helped herself to Derek’s bathroom while Isaac occupied the guest half bath, and as she settled back into her spot next to Boyd on the sectional she asked the alpha curiously, “When did you get so many books on the occult?”

Stiles stiffened as he realized that she was referring to the pile of books he’d left next to Derek’s bed, but Derek seemed unperturbed as he responded, “They’re not mine.”

When Stiles remained silent, Derek gave him an almost imperceptible nudge with his shoulder. “Uh,” he said, picking up on the cue. “They’re mine.”

“Oh. Why are you lending Derek books about witchcraft? Does it have something to do with the mysterious pack of werewolves that you won’t tell us about?” 

Now the attention of the whole pack was on them. Stiles coughed, already feeling an embarrassed flush start to creep across his cheeks. 

Derek saved him from having to respond when he said, “I’m not borrowing them.”

Everyone looked between them with matching expressions of confusion.

“What?” Erica finally asked.

“Stiles is living with me,” Derek elaborated.

“But why are his books in your bedroom?” Scott questioned.

“It’s our bedroom.”

Stiles had no idea how Derek managed to remain so outwardly calm as he said it, and there was a moment of stunned silence as everyone took in his words.

“What the fuck?” Erica said, and then promptly broke into a cackle. Scott was still looking at Stiles with concerned confusion.

“You’re...dating? You two?” Scott asked, as though trying to put together puzzle pieces that didn’t fit.

Stiles rolled his eyes. “Yeah,” he said, a little annoyed that the idea of him dating Derek was apparently unfathomable to his best friend.

“No! It’s not bad, I’m just surprised,” Scott hurried to say, clearly upset at being back on Stiles’ bad side after so recently making up.

“We're happy for you,” Allison said warmly, surreptitiously pinching her fiance's bicep. 

“When did you two actually get together?” Lydia asked suspiciously. 

Stiles glanced over at Derek; maybe they should have put a little more thought into the whole backstory of their fake relationship. “Um, awhile ago?” Stiles said. When Lydia still looked dubious, he added, “Since the omega attack.”

“I knew there was something happening!” Erica exclaimed. “You were totally sleeping here when I came over that one morning.”

Stiles just rubbed the back of his neck and tried to look sheepish. When the others started asking increasingly personal questions about their relationship (Stiles was pretty sure that someone was going to start asking about their sex life soon because holy shit these werewolves had, like, _zero_ boundaries), Derek finally spoke up again.

“We’re together, Stiles is living here, that’s it.” His tone was firm enough to shut down any further questions, and Stiles sank back into the sofa in relief. Derek put his arm around him as they restarted the movie, his thumb rubbing light, calming circles into Stiles’ shoulder. Stiles didn’t even feel tempted to pull away.

***

Stiles hadn’t really considered that he’d be sharing a bed with Derek until he was standing at the foot of it that night wearing only his boxers and a thin t-shirt. Derek emerged from the bathroom wearing even less–-Stiles had to concentrate on not staring at the hardened lines of muscle that corded over Derek’s bare chest and arms.

He watched as Derek collapsed onto one side of the bed without preamble, shoving one of the pillows under his head and flopping over onto his stomach. Stiles stood awkwardly at the end of the bed until Derek, without so much as turning his head from where it was pressed into the bedding, lifted a corner of the duvet in invitation. Stiles carefully slid under the blanket, clinging to the edge of the mattress and curling up into a tight ball as far away from Derek’s already-snoring body as possible.

He lay awake for what felt like hours, listening to the soft sound of Derek’s breathing and berating his reckless emotions; of all the times for his high school crush to resurface…He finally fell asleep just as the sky outside was starting to lighten, and when he woke again he was alone.

Stiles padded out to the kitchen and was greeted by the sight of a still-shirtless Derek standing over the stove, illuminated in a halo of early-morning light that was streaming through the window behind him and casually flipping pancakes while he sipped his coffee. It was a painfully domestic scene, and Stiles felt his heart drop to his stomach as images of him and Derek making breakfast together every morning paraded through his overactive imagination.

“Good morning.”

Stiles jolted a little from his position in the doorway. “Uh, hey.”

“Sleep well?”

Stiles nodded and took a seat at the kitchen table, unabashedly staring at Derek’s strong back while the man finished cooking. They ate mostly in silence, but Stiles was surprised by how comfortable it felt. It was easy to forget that he’d known Derek for going on seven years given how tense he normally was around the man, but somewhere along the way they’d gotten to know each other well enough that Stiles no longer felt like he had to fill the silences between them with his own rambling. 

_It’s trust,_ Stiles thought to himself. _I trust Derek._ He’d already known that he trusted Derek to have his back in a fight but this felt bigger, somehow; like he trusted Derek to see who he really was and not run away. Stiles didn’t even trust Scott with the darker parts of himself, but Stiles wasn’t afraid of Derek’s reaction to them.

Stiles must have been staring, because he was startled from his thoughts when Derek asked, “What?”

“What?” Stiles echoed.

“Is everything okay?”

“Yeah, fine,” Stiles said weakly.

Derek looked at him weirdly but didn’t press for more of an answer. “I’ve gotta run some errands today, you can come if you want.”

Stiles shrugged. “Okay.”

Running errands with Derek was weirdly fun. Stiles immediately commandeered the Camaro’s aux cord with only minimal grumbling from the older man, and they cruised into town with the windows open to let in the warm summer breeze.

They stopped at the bank, where Derek was basically treated like royalty-–Stiles had to stifle a laugh when the portly bank manager greeted Derek as ‘Mr. Hale’ and shook his hand so vigorously that it probably would’ve hurt a regular human. 

Next was the hardware store. Derek seemed to be on a first-name basis with most of the workers there, and he spent an eternity droning on with them about wood quality or some shit while Stiles wandered the aisles aimlessly. 

Then they stopped for lunch at the tiny little cafe where Stiles had spent long nights cramming for exams and poring over ancient texts in high school. Derek was greeted by name there too, a pretty blonde barista starting on his regular order before they even said hello. 

“I didn’t know you came here,” Stiles said in surprise. 

Derek just shrugged, but the barista spoke to him from behind the counter. “Derek’s one of our best customers.” Stiles didn’t miss the flirty little smile that she sent to Derek as she said it, and he couldn’t stop his small frown at her in response. 

“Oh,” she said, looking over at him a little too knowingly. “Are you guys together?”

Stiles was about to respond with a “no” when Derek instead said “Yes,” and casually swung an arm around Stiles’ shoulder.

“We’re dating, remember?” Derek leaned in to whisper it into Stiles’ ear, and the warmth of his breath sent goosebumps all the way down Stiles’ spine. He spent the next ten minutes trying to shake off the pleasant but unwelcome feeling. He wasn’t very successful.

***

They quickly settled into an easy routine together, running errands on the weekends and eating breakfast across the table from one another every morning. Stiles’ nightmares didn’t disappear, but he found it considerably easier to fall back asleep with Derek’s warm presence at his side, so undeniably real and alive and far away from the cell that still haunted his dreams.

The other pack members and the Sheriff seemed to have settled into the idea of Stiles and Derek being a couple too, although Scott still got a sort of confused look on his face every time he saw them cuddle up next to one another during pack movie nights–-something that was quickly becoming habit for Stiles and had stopped feeling awkward after about the third time they did it. Only Lydia remained skeptical.

She eventually tracked Stiles down at the loft while Derek was on his weekly grocery run, breezing through the front door and thunking a Starbucks cup down in front of him before he even had time to blink.

“So,” she said bluntly, and Stiles immediately started searching for escape routes. “Why are you and Derek pretending to be in a relationship?”

She watched him splutter for a moment before waving a perfectly-manicured hand in front of his face to quiet him. “Don’t try to deny it, I know you’re not really dating.”

Stiles slumped over onto the table pathetically. “How?”

Lydia rolled her eyes. “I know you, Stiles. If you were actually dating Derek Hale you’d be shouting it from the rooftops, not sneaking around. And I know Derek, and if he was actually dating you he’d be fucking you six ways from Sunday at every opportunity. You look very thoroughly un-fucked, Stiles.”

Stiles choked on air and stared at her, aghast. “Jesus christ, Lydia,” he said once he’d regained his voice.

She simply shrugged and took a dainty sip of her latte. “Don’t worry, everyone else thinks it’s real. So?” she prompted again. “What’s going on?”

Stiles groaned and tried to resist the urge to bang his head into the table repeatedly.

“I can’t exactly tell you.” He saw her narrowing eyes and rushed to add, “Not because I don’t want to! It’s for everyone’s safety, I promise.”

Lydia still looked dissatisfied and Stiles tried to imitate the puppy dog eyes that Scott had perfected as a small child. He wasn’t really sure that it worked, but Lydia seemed to take pity on him as her face relaxed slightly. 

“I wish you would tell us what’s going on with you.”

Stiles sighed and dragged a hand across his face. “Please, Lydia, I don’t want to talk about this right now. I _can’t_ talk about it right now.”

“Alright,” she said skeptically. “But Derek knows?”

“Yeah, Derek knows,” he admitted.

“Good,” she responded, the sincerity in her tone surprising him. “I’m glad you’re not dealing with it alone, whatever ‘it’ is.”

She stood to leave. “And by the way, I think the two of you should just have sex and get it over with already. You’re both being dumb.” 

And then Lydia Martin was gone as quickly as she’d come, leaving a trail of confusion and expensive French perfume behind her.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm honestly not very happy with this chapter, which is part of the reason why it took me so long to get it posted (sorry!) but then I just kind of said fuck it. In the timeless words of James Acaster, "I started baking it, had a breakdown...bon appetit!"


	6. Battle Plans

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Previously:
> 
> Lydia stood to leave. “And by the way, I think the two of you should just have sex and get it over with already. You’re both being dumb.” 
> 
> And then Lydia Martin was gone as quickly as she’d come, leaving a trail of confusion and expensive French perfume behind her.

Lydia’s words were still ringing in Stiles’ ears nearly a week later. He leaned against the kitchen counter and watched Derek move between the different pots on the stove, occasionally bobbing his head along to The Black Keys song blaring from the portable speaker. 

Stiles never would’ve guessed that Derek was some kind of genius in the kitchen, but the alpha seemed more at ease standing over a stove than Stiles had ever seen him. He even smiled a little bit when Stiles stole a spoonful of tomato sauce and declared it “entirely edible.” It was a side of Derek that Stiles hadn’t seen before, and he wondered glumly if this is what Derek would’ve been like all the time if Kate Argent had never entered his life.

“It’s been a month since I moved in,” Stiles said suddenly, interrupting the sad trajectory of his own thoughts. 

The alpha just shrugged and added a few shakes of salt to the pasta sauce. “I have to go back to Stanford soon,” Stiles said when Derek continued to ignore him.

Derek frowned. “What if the Dacian pack tries to track you down on campus?”

“I don’t think they can, not now that the wards are working again. I’m more worried that they’ll come here looking for me and find the pack instead.”

“They can’t use the internet to find you the non-magical way?”

Stiles snorted. “Dude, they’re from a remote village in Romania. Not exactly the most tech-savvy werewolves out there.”

“Don’t call me dude,” Derek muttered automatically, but the furrow between his brows deepened. “What are you going to do?”

“I don’t know,” Stiles said honestly. “I don’t feel comfortable leaving when we don’t know if they’re coming for me. I could try to do autumn quarter virtually, and I’m pretty sure my advisor would be fine if I finished my thesis from here.”

He paused to glance over at Derek, who was staring down determinedly at the stovetop. “Would that be okay?” Stiles asked hesitantly. “For me to stay here a while longer?” 

Derek still didn’t look up at him, but he nodded sharply. “Yeah,” he said, his voice oddly rough. “You can stay here.”

***

It wasn’t hard to convince Stiles’ advisor that the supposedly “distraction-free” environment of Beacon Hills would be more conducive to finishing his thesis than Stanford’s bustling campus (Stiles had to shush Derek for laughing when he heard Stiles giving that excuse over the phone). The Sheriff proved harder to persuade.

“You know Derek will still be here after you graduate,” he said pointedly, after Stiles had finished explaining his decision over the remains of their chicken casserole.

“It’s not because of Derek. There’s some wolfy stuff that may or may not be going down.”

John’s single raised eyebrow was enough to prompt Stiles into adding, “It’s nothing bad! Or we’re handling it, at least, but I can’t really leave right now.”

“And it has nothing at all to do with the werewolf you’re currently living with?” John asked suspiciously.

Stiles rolled his eyes. “You honestly think Derek would want me to stay if I didn’t have to?”

“I guess not,” John conceded. “He’s always wanted you to have a life outside of this town.”

And okay, Stiles had meant more that there was no way Derek would let Stiles continue to invade his personal space for another three months if it wasn’t a matter of life or death, but that worked too.

And honestly, Derek really _didn’t_ seem to mind having Stiles at the loft 24/7. The older man steadfastly ignored the clutter that always seemed to follow Stiles around no matter how hard he tried to keep his things organized, and as summer gave way to fall the bookshelves grew heavy with Stiles’ assorted textbooks and notebooks. Even Stiles’ constant rambling didn’t seem to bother Derek, who always nodded at the appropriate places even when it was obvious he wasn’t listening.

Stiles realized with a start one morning that Derek had started buying the sugary cereal he loved without saying anything about it, and he was equally surprised to find himself automatically brewing Derek a cup of his preferred chamomile tea without being asked. The loft truly felt like it was _theirs,_ and the pack had even started referring to it as Derek and Stiles’ place rather than just Derek’s.

It was easy to forget that Stiles was only there because the threat of the Dacian pack continued to hang heavy over their heads; Stiles found himself slipping seamlessly into the lie that he and Derek were living together because they simply didn’t want to be apart from one another for any longer than they had to. Their period of content domesticity came to an end in early October, when an autumn chill was just starting to creep its way into the early-morning air and Derek began replacing his gray t-shirts with black long-sleeved henleys. 

Surprisingly, Stiles heard them before Derek did. He was tucked into a corner booth at the same diner that they’d stopped at after he killed Nicolae, twirling the straw in his diet Coke while he waited for Derek to finish up at the hardware store. 

It took him a moment to recognize the melodic tones of Romanian filtering through all of the other background conversations of the diner, the voices unfamiliar but the accents too similar to the ones in his nightmares to be ignored. Stiles felt goosebumps break out across his arms as his breath started to come in stuttered gasps, but he couldn’t move from his seat on the cracked vinyl bench. 

There were three of them, seated around a table and speaking quietly with one another over plates of pancakes. It should’ve been funny to see the deadliest creatures Stiles had ever encountered tucking into double stacks of chocolate chip pancakes and rashers of bacon, but somehow the nonchalance with which they were eating only served to increase the terror of the moment.

Stiles willed his panic to subside while he surveyed the diner for exit routes; the entrance to the kitchen was just behind him, he could probably sneak through a back door if he could come up with enough of a distraction to get away without the werewolves noticing. But what if they already had the exits covered? _There’s gotta be a window I can fit through somewhere,_ Stiles thought, already halfway out of his seat to investigate the bathroom for possible escapes when the bell over the front door dinged obnoxiously.

Derek was in the doorway, his shoulders tensing as he sniffed the air a little too obviously. Stiles could see him struggling to maintain control when he scented the other werewolves, his eyes starting to flicker with crimson as he curled his hands into fists the way he always did when he was trying to hide his claws.

 _Shit shit shit_ , this was not good. Stiles was out of his seat in an instant, remembering at the last second to slap a few dollars down on the table to cover his bill before he launched himself at Derek, effectively shoving him back out into the parking lot. He was running to the Camaro at a dead sprint, certain that if he stopped to look behind him he’d find the three werewolves from the diner reaching out to grab him.

He didn’t realize he was gripping Derek’s hand until the alpha untangled their fingers to pull out his keys, Stiles pulling at the car door handle frantically as he waited for it to unlock. They were peeling out of the parking lot before Stiles could get his seatbelt on, Derek’s voice a constant, low whine that made the hairs on the back of his neck stand up.

“Who were they?” Derek grit out between clenched teeth, his - thankfully clawless - hands squeezing the steering wheel tightly. 

Stiles just shook his head, unable to speak around the panic choking in his throat. It wasn’t until they were locked in the relative safety of the loft that he got his voice back. “They were speaking Romanian,” he said quietly, the trembling of his hands betraying the fear he could still feel coursing through him.

Derek sat down heavily on the couch. “Fuck.”

Stiles let out a tremulous little laugh. “Yeah.”

There was a sharp knock at the door that had Derek back on his feet immediately, cocking his head to one side and placing a single finger over his mouth in a silent command to keep quiet. Stiles nodded, unsheathing his sica from his ankle as noiselessly as possible. Derek held up three fingers as he motioned to the door, and Stiles felt his eyes widen involuntarily; they'd been so dumb in their blind panic that they’d led the wolves from the diner straight to the loft. 

Derek looked at him like he was waiting for instructions, but when Stiles just shrugged he moved forward cautiously to open the door. The three men from the diner were standing on the threshold, looking unbothered by Derek’s red eyes and intense glare. One of them peered curiously over Derek’s shoulder and grinned with what appeared to be genuine delight.

“Stiles!” He looked like he was about to move around Derek but instead took an instinctive step backwards when Derek roared angrily at him.

“Stiles?” Now he sounded confused, and Stiles struggled to place the round, cheerful face of the werewolf who said his name with such familiarity. He’d forgotten a lot of his time in Romania, the trauma of winter break effectively blocking out most of his memories. But he got a sudden flash of blonde hair whipping past him on an obstacle course, blue unshifted eyes sparkling with laughter over bowls of stew laid out on a rough wooden table.

“Teodor?” Stiles questioned tentatively, his sica still raised for attack.

The man that Stiles now recognized as one of his favorite betas from his time training with the Dacians beamed back at him, nudging the wolf next to him. “I told you he’d remember me!” he said in soft Romanian.

Derek growled again and Teodor put his hands up placatingly, looking between Stiles and Derek in surprise. 

“He is your alpha?” Teo asked, again in Romanian, and Stiles nodded dumbly. _Why weren’t they trying to attack him?_

“Why are you here?” He asked, not bothering to hide his hostility. Teo had been one of his closest friends in Romania, but he was just as lethal as the rest of his pack and deserved to be treated like the threat that he was. Knowing that didn’t make it any easier to see the way his boyish face fell into a frown at Stiles’ tone.

“We came to find Nicolae–” Stiles shuddered involuntarily at the name, but Teodor didn’t seem to notice. “–because he left without telling anyone. We tracked him here, but we haven’t been able to find him.”

Stiles stared at the werewolf, unable to process the words that had just come out of his mouth. Derek huffed quietly and Stiles quickly translated for him. “He said they’re here to find Nicolae, that they tracked him here…”

“But they already knew he was here,” Derek muttered out of the corner of his mouth, unwilling to turn his back on the three werewolves on his threshold. 

Stiles shook his head dumbly. “I don’t know,” he said.

“Have you seen Nicolae?” Teo interjected in halting English. “Did he come to see you?”

Stiles snorted at that. “Alex didn’t tell you?”

“Tell us what?” The werewolf on Teo’s right asked, his brow furrowing in confusion.

“Nicolae came here to kill me,” Stiles said bluntly, carefully watching the werewolves’ reactions. They all looked a mixture of shocked and confused, breaking into loud Romanian as they spoke over one another.

“Why would Nicolae–”

“Alex didn’t know, he wouldn’t have–”

“He has to be lying–”

“Stop!” Stiles eventually shouted, his voice startling the three betas into silence. “I don’t know what’s going on, but I want you to leave.”

“Now,” Derek added firmly, his red eyes still glowing intensely. 

“Stiles–” 

“No,” Stiles cut Teo off quickly. “I’m not going back with you. We’ll fight if we have to.”

Teodor just looked more confused. “We would never ask you to come back with us if you are happy with this pack. We did not even know you were here!”

When Stiles and Derek just stared at him dubiously, he shook his head. “You need to talk to Alex,” he said.

“Alex is here?”

Derek tensed at the distress in Stiles’ voice, carefully reaching out a hand to grasp his forearm and squeeze tightly, a silent reminder that he was safe. Teodor glanced from Derek’s hand to Stiles’ panicked expression.

“You are afraid? Of Alex?” the werewolf questioned, his confusion obvious.

Stiles supposed it would be confusing, if Teo was telling the truth about not knowing why Nicolae had come to Beacon Hills. Stiles had always been the one person – werewolf or human – who _wasn’t_ afraid of Alex. He’d gained a reputation among the Dacian pack for being fearless in the face of their high alpha’s power, the only person who could handle Alex’s intense moods with his body and smile intact. 

“I’ll talk to Alex, but not alone,” Stiles said, neatly sidestepping the question. Derek gave a low growl but didn’t protest when Teo wrote out a meeting time on a scrap of paper and Stiles suggested an easily-defensible clearing in the preserve as a location. 

“We will see you there, yes?” Teo asked, the hope in his voice unmistakable. Stiles nodded and the werewolf seemed to relax a fraction. “I do not know what is happening, but Alex will want to see you. And Cezar, too.” 

Stiles bit down hard on his lower lip to stop himself from reacting to that, nodding once in acknowledgement before essentially shutting the door in the three wolves’ faces. He waited until he heard the ding of the elevator before sliding down to the floor, his legs suddenly unable to hold his weight. Derek sat down heavily beside him, their sides pressed tightly together.

“What is going on?” He asked, the confusion in his tone mirroring Stiles’ own. 

“I have no idea. Do you think they were lying, about not knowing?”

Derek shrugged, his shoulder bumping against Stiles’. “You know them better than I do,” he said.

“I wouldn’t be surprised if Alex didn’t tell them. They’re a high power distance pack; the betas rarely know what’s really going on, they just sort of follow orders.”

“Wish we were like that,” Derek mumbled, obviously trying to break through the heavy, stressed tension that had settled around them. Stiles gave an obligatory chuckle, but it did little to unfurl the tight coil of fear sitting low in his gut. 

“We have to tell the others,” Derek said quietly.

“I know.”

“I’ll tell them to come over,” Derek said, heaving himself up off the floor and pulling Stiles with him. He gave Stiles’ hand a gentle, reassuring squeeze before he left to call the others, and Stiles tried not to think about how comforting just that simple touch from Derek felt.

***

Telling the pack was somehow simultaneously easier and more difficult than Stiles had anticipated; he’d spent so much time carefully talking around the details of his gap year that finally telling the truth left him feeling uncomfortably exposed and vulnerable, but also strangely relieved. Stiles was grateful that Derek’s heavy glare mostly kept the others from interrupting while he stumbled through a tangled explanation of his time with the Dacian pack, concluding with the visit from the three betas. He stared down at his feet when he told them about Nicolae kidnapping him over winter break so that he didn’t have to see their expressions, but he couldn’t stop himself from hearing Erica’s gasp and Scott’s pained whine when he explained that he’d been held and tortured for several weeks.

“Why wouldn’t you tell us?” Scott asked when he’d finally finished, the hurt clear in his voice.

“It didn’t seem like that big of a deal three years ago,” Stiles said, willing his best friend to understand why he hadn’t been able to talk about it. 

“But then winter break…” Scott trailed off, uncertain how to broach the topic of Stiles’ kidnapping without unnecessarily dredging up painful memories; Stiles was grateful for his rare display of sensitivity.

“I didn’t know how to tell you. And I felt so dumb, like how could I have been so fucking stupid, you know?”

“You weren’t being stupid, dude, you had no reason to think they’d hurt you like that.”

Stiles shook his head. “I should’ve known better, I knew how dangerous they were. Hell, they taught me to literally kill people.”

Scott winced slightly but covered it up well enough that Stiles didn’t feel a need to comment on it; he’d always known that Scott wouldn’t understand why training with the Dacian pack had been so appealing to him. Alex had given him a chance to learn how to fight back and protect the people he cared for, who he’d been watching get hurt and nearly killed for most of the previous three years. Stiles had jumped at the opportunity to be something more than the weak human for once. 

Derek cleared his throat, snapping Stiles back to the present. “I want everyone back here at the loft by noon tomorrow to get ready for the meeting. We don’t know what they want, but we should be prepared to fight if we need to.”

He turned to Allison. “Is your dad in town? We might need him as backup if things go wrong.”

She nodded and pulled out her phone to call Chris while the rest of the pack settled into the comfortably familiar motions of a pack movie night, jostling for positions on the couch and fighting over the movie selection. Derek crowded in close to Stiles on the recliner. It was far too small for the both of them, but Stiles found that he didn’t mind being forced to basically sit on Derek’s lap. 

“Are you okay?” Derek asked quietly, one of his arms winding around Stiles’ back to cradle him against his body, making Stiles feel small and protected as he pressed into Derek’s broad chest.

“I’m okay,” Stiles reassured him, only half-believing it himself. 

Derek made a small, distressed noise in the back of his throat and nuzzled his face into Stiles’ neck. “You’re not weak,” he reminded him, somehow knowing what Stiles was thinking before he did. 

Stiles just nodded mutely, letting himself relax into Derek’s hold. He was pretty sure this was beyond what was required to keep up the pretense of a relationship, but he couldn’t make himself care; it was almost certainly going to hurt like hell when they finally had to stop pretending, but Stiles wanted to let himself believe that it was real even if just for a little while. And weirdly, he thought Derek might feel the same way. He didn’t know when the last time was that Derek had been so close to another person, physically or emotionally, and it made his heart twinge with sadness to imagine the alpha returning home to an empty apartment after Stiles moved out, no one there to witness his joy in the kitchen when he cooked for one instead of two.

“You don’t have to be alone,” he murmured into Derek’s hair, the words surprising him even as he said them. Derek pulled back to look into his eyes questioningly, but the sound of Isaac yelling at them to get a room brought their surroundings back into sharp relief, breaking the little bubble of contentment that had formed around them.

“Fuck off,” Stiles said to Isaac, but he unwound himself from Derek’s hold and slid down off of his lap as he said it, falling to a seat on the rug and leaning back against the alpha’s shins comfortably. Derek carded a hand through Stiles’ hair and left it there for the rest of the movie, a comforting, constant weight against his head. 

That night, when the others had all gone home and it was just the two of them in the dark stillness of the bedroom, Derek didn’t hesitate to pull Stiles close and wrap his large body around him. They laid there in silence together, neither of them able to achieve more than a few hours of dozing sleep before the sun rose. 

The morning unfolded as it always did for the two of them; Derek made a frittata and Stiles rambled on about the merits of various egg-based breakfasts, Derek nodding along when prompted. Stiles reread one of his books about protection spells, not really processing the words as his eyes skimmed over the pages, while Derek thumbed through a well-worn paperback. 

“Do you want to tell your dad?” Derek asked as they made lunch in preparation for the rest of the pack’s arrival.

Stiles shook his head. “Not until it’s over, at least. I don’t want him involved in this.”

“You don’t want to tell him that you’ve been lying to him for the past three years,” Derek said pointedly, but it wasn’t an accusation.

“You’re not wrong,” Stiles admitted. “He hates when I keep things from him.”

Derek kept his eyes trained on his book as he asked, “Will he be angry when he finds out we’re not actually together?”

Stiles was quiet for a long moment as he contemplated the question. “I was thinking...maybe I won’t tell him,” he said eventually.

“What do you mean?”

“I mean it could be real, if you wanted it to be.” Stiles didn’t dare to look over at Derek, afraid to see the rejection that might be waiting for him if he did – or worse, the pity. 

But Derek didn’t have a chance to respond before Isaac, Scott, and Allison were bursting into the loft, arguing playfully about something. Stiles nearly growled in frustration, because _of course_ they would show up right as he was about to have a breakthrough with Derek, because Stiles apparently had the shittiest luck in the world. He’d never been more resentful of the pack’s lack of boundaries and easy access to Derek’s apartment. The others didn’t seem to notice his annoyance as they beelined toward the stack of sandwiches on the kitchen counter, not bothering to greet them with more than a wave.

***

Stiles spent most of the afternoon pacing around the loft, slowly giving in to the familiar creeping anxiety that typically accompanied his thoughts about Alex. It wasn’t until Derek physically dragged him down onto the couch beside him that Stiles managed to calm down marginally, but even then he couldn’t stop his leg from bouncing against Derek’s. 

“Relax,” the alpha said softly, one of his hands resting comfortably on Stiles’ jiggling thigh.

“I can’t,” Stiles grit out, now fidgeting with his phone. 

The rest of the pack seemed content to watch the movie that Derek had pulled up on the flat screen, but Stiles was practically jumping out of his own skin with energy and adrenaline. He’d never felt more alert despite the previous night’s lack of sleep, like the world around him had somehow become sharper and brighter.

“It’s going to be okay,” Derek reassured him.

“You don’t know him,” Stiles said, unable to stop the hint of fear from creeping into his voice.

Derek wrapped an arm around Stiles’ shoulders and hauled them both up to a standing position, leading him quickly to the bedroom as if he could sense Stiles’ impending meltdown and wanted to let him break down in private. Erica wolf whistled at them, loud enough for even Stiles’ human ears to pick up, and he felt his face flush involuntarily at the implication that he and Derek were sneaking off to have sex before they had to confront his possibly-homicidal ex-boyfriend.

“I know you’re scared,” Derek said once he’d closed the door behind them. “It’s okay, Stiles.”

Stiles resumed his pacing, wearing a pattern into the floor at the foot of the bed. “It’s not okay, Derek. If someone gets hurt…”

“I won’t let that happen,” Derek said firmly. “And if someone does get hurt, it won’t be your fault.”

Stiles laughed humorlessly. “They’re here because of me, how is that not my fault?”

“You had no way of knowing they’d come here.”

“I trusted them. I should have known...I should’ve seen what kind of person he was three years ago.” Stiles felt sick now, thinking of how he’d so easily placed his trust in Alex when he hadn’t really known him at all.

Derek snorted and just gestured to himself, as if to tell Stiles that he was preaching to the choir on that one. Stiles nearly managed a smile in response. 

Derek looked over at the clock on the bedside table. “We’ll have to leave soon. You ready?”

Stiles nodded nervously, chewing at his bottom lip. He was so far from ready it wasn’t even funny, but he knew he was as ready as he could be given the circumstances. 

Derek pressed one hand to Stiles’ shoulder, the other snaking around his waist as he pulled him in for a brief, searing kiss. Stiles only had a moment to be surprised before Derek was pulling back as quickly as he’d started it, his eyes burning with something that Stiles had never seen in them before. 

“You’re not alone,” he said before he left to gather the others.

***

“What the fuck?”

Stiles grinned shamelessly at Scott, his sense of pride overwhelming the low-level panic that he’d been experiencing for the past twenty four hours. “Isn’t it cool? I got the idea from Supernatural.”

“You’ve been carrying these around in your car this entire time?” Derek looked torn between admonishing and impressed.

“Yep!” Stiles said happily, absently stroking a hand over the Remington 7600 rifle that was carefully stowed under the false bottom in the back of the Jeep.

“You know how to shoot a gun?”

Stiles rolled his eyes at Isaac’s incredulity. “Uh yeah, dude.” He gestured to himself with an all-encompassing sweep of his hand. “Sheriff’s son, my 13th birthday was at the shooting range? This ringing any bells?”

“Who the fuck let you around guns?” Erica questioned, a not-so-subtle dig at Stiles’ general lack of coordination. 

“I’m good with weapons,” Stiles shrugged. 

It was true that Stiles would never be well known for his grace of movement, but the sheriff had recognized early on that telling Stiles not to touch the guns he kept in the house would have the exact opposite effect; instead, John had decided to teach Stiles to shoot in a way that would be safe for everyone involved. And then in Romania Stiles had plenty of opportunity to learn to wield the slightly less high-tech but just as effective knives and daggers that the Dacians preferred. The years of shooting and intensive training with blades had turned Stiles into an incredibly lethal klutz, and his resourcefulness on the dark web had allowed him to stockpile what was essentially a small armory of weapons.

Stiles quickly snatched back the handgun that Isaac was examining with a little bit too much excitement and carefully laid it back in its foam housing.

“No guns,” he said seriously.

Isaac gestured to the rifle that Stiles was cradling in his arms. “No guns for werewolves who don’t know how to use them,” Stiles amended, ignoring the pleading look on Isaac’s face. 

Instead he pulled out a box of glass bottles, a gas can, and a handful of rags that he’d obviously torn from his old graphic tees, the red-white-and-blue Captain America logo still visible on one of the scraps of fabric.

“Molotov cocktails?” Derek questioned, the curiosity in his tone tempered with exasperation.

Stiles nodded. “It’s my own recipe, a mix of gasoline, alcohol, detergent, and wolfsbane. They’re fucking deadly and they smoke like a bitch, so only use them if you’re actively running away from wherever you’re throwing them.”

“Did the other pack teach you all of this?” Lydia asked. They’d all been referring to the Dacians as the “other” pack, like they didn’t want to give them any power by saying the actual name. Stiles took comfort in the reminder that Alex was and always would be the “other,” and that the Beacon Hills pack was still his norm. 

“Are you kidding me? I started teaching myself about this shit the day after Peter came back from the dead,” Stiles replied, only half-joking. 

He moved aside to let the others grab as many bottles as they could hold and Derek leaned his head close enough to quietly ask, “Do you really think you could shoot Alex if it came down to it?”

Stiles shrugged because he honestly didn’t know the answer, and Derek nodded his understanding. He clasped one of his hands on Stiles’ shoulder and Stiles focused in on that point of contact, letting Derek’s touch ground him. He looked over at the alpha and held his gaze for a long moment, the ferocity of Derek’s determination evident in his piercing eyes, and for the first time since Nicolae he felt like they might have a chance.


	7. The End

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> CW: offscreen death of an OC, blood, very brief reference to past suicidal thoughts

Looking back, it probably wasn’t the best plan that Stiles had ever come up with. He broke away from the others at the last possible second, waiting until Derek had shut the passenger side door of the Jeep behind him before he floored it out of the preserve. Christ, Derek was going to kill him – provided he didn’t die first.

Stiles had snatched up the note on the Jeep’s windshield while the rest of the pack was still busy examining his hidden stash of weapons in the trunk (and seriously, the Dacians needed to figure out a new form of communication because the secret notes were getting old). It contained an updated location and nothing more, but Stiles knew what it meant: come alone, or else.

Stiles probably should have told the others about the note, but as he looked around at them in the parking lot of Derek’s apartment building a surge of protectiveness rose up in him that made it so he just couldn’t form the words. So he’d driven them to the edge of the clearing where they’d originally agreed to meet the Dacians and then left them there, driving away before they even realized he was gone.

Stiles made no attempt to cover his tracks as he sped across town; he only hoped that he could weaken the Dacian pack enough to give the others an advantage when they arrived. Otherwise it was certain to be a bloodbath – Stiles had a lot of faith in his pack, but he knew that even all of them together would be nothing more than a light workout for the Dacians.

Stiles shook his head to rid it of the unwelcome image of Alex standing victoriously over Derek’s lifeless body. He pulled up in front of the same abandoned apartment building where he’d killed Nicolae, a bubble of hysterical laughter threatening to break free at the poetic symmetry of it all. He walked through the eerily silent hallways, winding his way down to the basement. 

Stiles knew immediately that something was wrong. Alex wasn’t there, and neither were the betas from the diner. As his eyes adjusted to the relative darkness of the basement, Stiles saw only a lone figure crouched into a fighting stance in the middle of the room: Cezar.

Of all the Dacian werewolves, Stiles had the most respect for – and fear of – Cezar. He was an old wolf (no one seemed sure how old, exactly) and had helped to raise and train Alex. He was also undeniably lethal, and was known to be ruthless and often cruel in his methods.

Stiles could have convinced himself that Alex wouldn’t be interested in retaliating for Nicolae’s death, but Cezar was an entirely different story. He followed the old laws – ancient traditions that required payment for the taking of a life, regardless of why it had been taken.

_ Oh,  _ Stiles thought dumbly,  _ I’m going to die. _ He knew it with absolute certainty – there was no way for him to talk his way out of it, no way to stall until help could arrive. This is where it would all end for Stiles, in the creepy basement of an old abandoned building in the town that had both raised him and taken so much from him.

And he was going to die for nothing. It was unlikely that Alex even knew where Cezar was; the elder werewolf had never considered himself beholden to the high alpha. Cezar had lured Stiles to the abandoned building all on his own, probably knowing that Alex would be unwilling to actually kill the man marked as his mate. Stiles wanted to go back in time and punch his past self in the face for being stupid enough to fall into the trap. Cezar was going to kill him, leaving Alex free to pick off the rest of the pack as he pleased without even Stiles there to protect them. 

Unlike Nicolae, Cezar did not waste time on theatrics or long, villainous monologues. The werewolf sprang forward immediately, surprisingly graceful for his age, and Stiles was suddenly fighting for his life.

Given the sheer number of his nightmares that involved this exact scenario, Stiles felt he really ought to have been better prepared for it. He was technically prepared for his death, of course. He’d had his paltry affairs in order since the early days after the Nogitsune possession, when he’d been so sure that it was going to come back for him that he’d contemplated killing himself just to save Chris the trouble later on. 

There was a box of things tucked away in the back of a closet for his dad, along with a sternly-worded note commanding him to watch his diet and warning him not to go looking for peace at the bottom of a whiskey bottle. For Lydia there were file folders full of half-completed research into the supernatural, because she was the only one he trusted with what amounted to his life’s work. Allison would get his weapons, Erica his superhero-themed t-shirts, and Boyd the top-secret chocolate chip cookie recipe that had passed down through generations of Stilinskis. 

Stiles had left an overflowing collection of some of the ugliest scarves known to man for Isaac as a final parting insult to his fashion choices, and Jackson would get his beat up old lacrosse stick. For Scott, his best friend and brother, there was a video message and a stack of their favorite video games. And Stiles had written and then rewritten a simple, unassuming letter for Derek, who would always and forever be his alpha.

Now, imagining the people he loved most in the world discovering the things he left behind for them made Stiles want to scream at the unfairness of it all. Sure, he’d willingly walked into the dingy basement knowing that his death was a distinct possibility, but he hadn’t really been  _ expecting  _ to die. In his nightmares he had always resigned himself to his impending death fairly easily, but now that it was actually about to happen he couldn’t stop the wave of sadness and grief that rolled through him at the thought of all the things he wouldn’t get to do. 

For the first time in a long time, Stiles  _ wanted.  _ He wanted to stand up with Scott at his wedding while he married the love of his life; he wanted to be there when Lydia inevitably won a Nobel prize, and when Erica had her first kid with Boyd. 

Most of all, Stiles wanted more time with Derek.  _ His  _ Derek, who had kissed him for the first time just hours ago but had always looked at him with unshakable faith and trust. It hurt to imagine Derek finding his body when it was already too late, the tiny little spark between them effectively snuffed out before it was even a tangible thing.

When the moment came, it was stunningly anticlimactic; one second Stiles was bringing his sica up to strike again and the next he was staggering backwards, his chest ripping open with a searing pain unlike anything he’d ever felt. The ground rose up to meet him as he tipped backwards with his arms extended out in front of him, like after a lifetime of clumsiness his body was instinctively trying to counterbalance his fall. Stiles caught a brief glimpse of his hands as he fell and he noted dimly that they were stained bright red with blood. It felt like penance for the lives he’d taken – the metaphorical blood on his hands turning literal just in time for his own death, and Stiles hoped that Hell wasn’t a real place because that was almost certainly where he was heading if it was.

It seemed like eons before his skull finally thunked onto the concrete floor, the impact merely a small drop of pain compared to the ocean of agony that was consuming the rest of his body. Stiles was certain that someone had lit a match inside his chest cavity and was letting it burn him from the inside out, yet there was a deadly chill creeping slowly up his arms and legs. The flames that burned through Stiles’ lungs choked him until he was gasping desperately for air, something silky warm and wet spilling from his mouth – the coppery tang of it familiar but impossible for Stiles to identify.

It was so similar to his nightmares and yet not at all what he’d imagined. For one thing, there was no pleasant, movie-like replay of his life that always seemed to accompany the near-death experiences in his night terrors. But, Stiles thought, at least he was getting a final glimpse of Derek’s eyes. 

He wondered idly when Derek had even gotten there and knew that the gaps in his recent memory were probably a bad sign, but Stiles couldn’t bring himself to care as he stared into the alpha-red eyes that hovered above him, two glowing orbs that were incandescently beautiful even in their obvious panic. 

Stiles tried to raise his hand to smooth away some of the terror in those pretty eyes, but he found that he couldn’t move. He heard himself whimper in desperation and warm fingers brushed across his icy skin, leaving trails of fire behind them. A distant voice was telling him not to move and all at once Stiles became aware of a heavy pressure against his chest; someone was trying to hold the pieces of him together with their bare hands.

“Derek?” He tried to ask, but it came out as a low, unintelligible gurgle of sound.

Stiles couldn’t decipher the words being said to him, but the cadence of the low voice was achingly familiar. He felt himself sinking into the waiting blackness, content in the knowledge that Derek was there with him – he wasn’t alone.

A roar so loud that it vibrated through the ground beneath him tore Stiles back from the edge of unconsciousness, and he knew instantly that it was Alex. He managed to flop his head over to one side just enough to make out the hazy edges of the high alpha where he stood half-shifted in the doorway, his red eyes only a few shades darker than Derek’s. Stiles caught Alex’s crazed gaze through half-lidded eyes and he watched the alpha’s mouth tear open into a howl that exposed every single one of his lethally-pointed fangs. 

And then Alex was launching himself out of Stiles’ line of sight and the unmistakable sound of claws ripping apart flesh rang through the air; Stiles poured his last reserves of strength into hoping with his entire being that the noises of certain death weren’t coming from anyone in his pack.

After a long moment, the world around Stiles fell silent. The constant burning in his chest was almost a comfort now, the chill in his extremities making him feel oddly heavy. Derek snarled over Stiles, the alpha’s strong hands pressing him down into the concrete in a continued, futile attempt to stem some of the bleeding. 

“Alex,” Stiles said, and this time he forced the word out around the dribbles of blood that were still pouring from his lips.

The high alpha was beside him in a second, and Stiles tried to ignore the obvious hurt in Derek’s expression. He had a dim awareness of his head being cradled between large, rough hands.

“I’m here,” Alex said softly, and Stiles let his eyes flutter closed at the sound of the voice that he hadn’t heard outside of his dreams in more than three years.

“Pain,” Stiles croaked out. “Please.”

For a moment he was worried that Alex hadn’t understood him, but then those heavy hands were moving down over his shoulders, replacing Derek’s as they came to rest gently over the gaping hole that Cezar’s claws had torn into his chest. 

Slowly, the fire there began to recede to a warmth that spread through the rest of his body and chased away some of the cold that had settled over him. Stiles’ breathing started to come easier even as the world around him grew fuzzier, and when the burning in his chest had subsided to a more comprehensible pain, Stiles at last gave into the blackness that had been lurking at the edges of his vision.

Stiles was sure he was dead. His body felt weightless and numb, no trace of the fiery pain that he now only vaguely remembered lingering beneath his skin. But then he raised his head slightly and saw Derek slumped over beside him, black lines tracing up his forearm as he leached away Stiles' pain even in sleep. Stiles let himself succumb to the darkness yet again.

When he woke, the pain was back and Derek had been replaced by his dad, who looked up from his newspaper in alarm when Stiles groaned groggily.

“Shh, don’t try to talk,” John said, one hand smoothing over Stiles’ forehead comfortingly as he reached behind him to press the call button on the wall. 

Stiles let the answering nurse prod at him and fiddle with one of the many machines he was hooked up to before he tried to speak. “How long?” He rasped.

“Two days,” his dad replied, and even in his weakened state Stiles didn’t miss the tremor of fear in his voice.

He closed his eyes so he didn’t have to see his dad’s face when he asked, “The others?”

“They’re all okay,” John reassured him immediately, and Stiles felt some of the tension bleed out of his muscles. 

“Where’s Derek?”

“I made him go home to eat something and shower, he’d been here since they brought you in.”

Stiles didn’t respond, hit by a sudden wave of exhaustion that left him without the energy to speak another word. 

“You’re alright, son. Sleep.”

Stiles’ world fell back into blackness almost immediately.

Stiles finally woke for good nearly twelve hours later. Derek was back, his head snapping up as Stiles’ eyes blinked open. They stared at each other for a moment that stretched into timelessness, an intense gaze that was broken only by Stiles’ dry coughing. Derek handed him a plastic cup of water and helped him drink from the straw, the cool liquid rushing past his cracked lips and bringing relief to his wrecked throat. 

“What happened?” Stiles asked once he’d gotten his voice back.

“You’re an idiot,” Derek replied, but Stiles could see how his hands shook when he said it.

“I know.” Stiles tried to smile but winced involuntarily when it sent a stabbing pain through his skull. 

Derek’s hand was there immediately, drawing away some of the ache in streaks of black. “You have a concussion,” he said, “and a giant fucking hole in your chest.”

“Oops?” Stiles said, and tried to shrug apologetically without dislodging any of the tubing that connected him to the beeping machines.

Derek rolled his eyes and then dropped his gaze to the bandages that covered most of Stiles’ torso. “When we got there, you were–” his voice cracked and Stiles reached out to squeeze his hand. “You were in bad shape. Alex killed Cezar, and then he did something that stopped the bleeding long enough for us to get you here.” 

“Alex can take away pain, like you do,” Stiles explained, answering Derek’s unspoken question. “But he can also draw power from the other alphas in his pack, enough that he can heal people sometimes. It’s not enough to really fix anyone and I’m pretty sure he’s not supposed to do it without asking the other alphas first, but I guess he decided I was worth it.”

“You are,” Derek replied automatically, looking a little surprised to hear his own words. He cleared his throat awkwardly and Stiles gave him a moment to recover. 

“Alex is still here,” Derek said eventually, and Stiles was grateful that he didn’t have to ask. “He said he’ll stay until you can talk to him.”

“Does it…” Stiles paused, trying to work out how to phrase his question in a way that wouldn’t make Derek any angrier than he already was. “Will it bother you to have him here?”  _ Are you upset that I want to talk to him?  _ Stiles really wanted to ask.

Derek shrugged. “He saved you,” he said, like that was the only answer required. And maybe it was.

***

It was another week before Stiles was allowed to leave the hospital, and even then he was under strict instructions not to do anything that might endanger his slow recovery. 

“Do you think going to meet my alpha werewolf ex-boyfriend who I thought was trying to kill me or possibly kidnap me back to Romania but actually ended up saving my life counts as strenuous activity?” Stiles asked glibly as Derek rolled his wheelchair through the sterile hospital hallways towards the parking lot. 

“I think they were talking more about lifting heavy boxes and exercising,” Derek said mildly. 

“Okay, good. It would suck to have to come back here because I accidentally tore myself open again.”

Stiles could actually hear Derek’s hands tighten around the leather handle grips of the wheelchair. 

“I’m fine,” he said immediately, reaching behind him to pat one of the alpha’s hands reassuringly, but Derek’s grip didn’t seem to loosen.

“You almost weren’t,” he said, his tone serious and dark.

“But I am. I’m okay.  _ We’re  _ okay.”

Derek just growled under his breath.

It took a lot of painful maneuvering to get Stiles situated in the passenger seat of the Camaro, but he was so happy to be out of the hospital that he didn’t even really mind the stabbing pain in his chest or the dull ache that was still pressing up against the base of his skull. He demanded that they go straight to Alex – the sooner they got it all over with, the better. 

The rest of the pack met them outside the hotel where the Romanians had been staying. Stiles needed help getting out of the Camaro, and he only just managed to hold back a hiss of pain as Derek lifted him carefully out of the passenger seat. He wished they could’ve gotten there before the others to minimize the number of witnesses to his weakness, but Derek had refused to drive faster than 20 miles per hour for fear of jostling Stiles around too much. 

Thankfully the others didn’t comment on the way Stiles’ entire body shook with the simple effort of standing on his own two feet, but Lydia’s eyes were watery when she leaned in to hug him gently and Scott’s grin was brittle as he patted him gingerly on the back. 

“You come up with the worst plans, man.”

“Better than yours,” Stiles shot back, but the retort came through gritted teeth. Derek reached out a hand to take some of the pain away and Stiles let the relief wash over him, shaking out some of the pain-induced tension in his shoulders. “Alright,” he said after a moment, “let’s do this.”

The hotel was perfectly nondescript, clean and bland in its decor like any other midrange Marriott in America. Teodor answered Stiles’ knock and looked simultaneously worried and cheerful as he invited them in. It was a tight squeeze to fit all of them into the room, with the Beacon Hills pack crowded near the door and Alex and the three betas from the diner perched carefully on the edge of the large sofa. Alex looked exactly the same as Stiles remembered him, towering over everyone else even when sitting; it was like the alpha had his own gravitational pull and Stiles had to fight not to get drawn in by it.

“Stiles.” Alex spoke first, his deep, rumbling voice sending an involuntary shiver down Stiles’ spine. 

“Alex,” Stiles said shortly, glad that his voice remained firm even as his mind swirled with terror and longing, a confusing cocktail of emotion that Stiles was utterly unequipped to deal with.

“I’m glad to see you are doing better. I did not expect Cezar to harm you, or I would have stopped him sooner.”

Stiles rolled his eyes, already impatient. “Can we skip this part, please? What do you want from me?”

Alex frowned. “I don’t want anything from you. I simply want to understand what has happened here.”

Stiles glanced over at Derek, who inclined his head slightly: Alex wasn’t lying, at least not in any way that Derek could detect.

“What is there to understand? You sent Nicolae here to kidnap me and then I killed him.”

One of the betas flanking Alex made a small choking noise, but Alex silenced him with a simple wave of his hand. “I did not send Nicolae here.” 

The high alpha seemed unphased at the revelation that Stiles had killed his brother, and Stiles wondered how much he’d already known. Had Alex felt it through the pack bonds, when Stiles slit Nicolae’s throat? The idea that he might have made Stiles feel both proud and sick to his stomach.

“Then why was he here?” Stiles challenged.

“I have never been my brother’s keeper,” Alex said calmly. “You know that. I did not question Nicolae when he said he was coming here, and he did not volunteer any information with regard to his motives.”

“You had to know I was here. My wards broke, you knew you could track me.”

Alex stared at him with unblinking eyes. “I did not know you had warded yourself.”

Derek nodded again when Stiles looked to him for confirmation that it was the truth.

“But you must have,” he protested. “You must have seen them last winter.”

For the first time since the conversation began – and, indeed, since Stiles had known him – Alex looked confused. “Last winter?”

Stiles felt his knees go weak at the open, honest expression on Alex’s face. It was a side of the alpha that only Stiles had ever been privy to, the part of him that was more man than wolf. 

“You really don’t know?” Stiles whispered.

Alex simply cocked his head to the side and Stiles rapidly sifted through his jumbled memories of winter break. He couldn’t find a single one that actually contained Alex; they were all of Nicolae, and Nicolae alone. Cold realization dawned on Stiles at last. 

“I was in Bucharest last winter when some of your betas saw me at a market. Nicolae took me, kept me in a cell for weeks before I escaped,” he explained.

Teodor and the other betas physically recoiled into the sofa as Alex’s eyes flashed. Stiles was seconds away from telling the rest of his pack to leave before Alex shifted and killed them all – an angry Alex was a very, very dangerous thing – when the alpha seemed to regain control, the red fading from his eyes as quickly as it had come.

“It’s not possible,” he said harshly. Derek growled deep at the back of his throat, but Stiles didn’t move his gaze from Alex.

“You heard my heartbeat, you know it’s not a lie.”

Alex was on his feet, stalking across what little open space there was in the cramped room like a restless animal. “Why would he take you?”

Stiles shrugged. “He told me it was for you, that I was marked as your mate, but I think he wanted me for himself.”

Alex looked stricken, the sudden depth of emotion on his face sending Stiles into a mental tailspin. It was only Derek’s hand on his shoulder that kept him from physically staggering backwards.

“You know?”

Stiles started at the unexpected question. “Know what?”

“That you’ve been marked,” Alex clarified.

“It’s true?” Some small part of Stiles had thought – had hoped – that Nicolae had been lying. But Alex gave a sharp nod of confirmation and Stiles felt a piece of himself shatter. “For three years? Why didn’t you tell me?”

Alex stared directly into his eyes, and every moment they’d ever shared flashed through Stiles’ memory. “You wanted to go home, and I would never have done anything to keep you from your happiness. Even if you had chosen to stay, you would have regretted it.”

Stiles wanted to scream, or maybe break things. “It should have been my choice to make! You let me leave you without saying anything.”

“Please, Mieczysław…”

“No,” Stiles was practically shouting. “You don’t get to call me that anymore! Your brother made sure of that.” 

There had been a time when Alex was the only person Stiles knew who used his real name. And then Nicolae, jealous that his brother had a piece of Stiles that he didn’t, had tortured Stiles’ given name out of him and turned it against him.

“What did he do?” Alex asked, his eyes flashing with crimson again and his voice edged with anger and hard authority. Stiles bit his tongue, glancing over at the other pack members. Derek pressed a hand to the small of his back, just over the burn mark that Stiles had been carrying on his skin since winter break.

“Show him,” Derek prompted softly.

Stiles sighed and grit his teeth. “Help me,” he said, struggling to slide out of his shirt without aggravating the patched-together wound on his chest. Derek rolled his eyes but his touch was gentle as he lifted up the back of Stiles’ t-shirt and spun him around so that Alex could see the exposed skin.

Stiles heard Alex’s breath hitch when the alpha caught sight of the brand that Nicolae had burned into him: the mark of Alex’s own pack, still pink and raised against Stiles’ pale skin. Alex moved towards Stiles, a hand outstretched as though to trace over the scar, and Derek roared a warning, dropping the hem of Stiles’ t-shirt and pushing Stiles partially behind him. Derek was no match for Alex, but the Dacian alpha came to a halt anyway.

“Nicolae did that?”

Stiles nodded and was surprised when Alex dropped to his knees in a traditional sign of respect that he had never seen the high alpha use before.

“I apologize,” Alex said in his deep voice, tilting his head to the side and exposing his neck in the ultimate sign of submission. 

Stiles knelt directly in front of him, ignoring Derek’s low growl. The room around them faded away until the only thing Stiles could hear was the sound of Alex’s breathing. The alpha kept his eyes trained on the carpet, waiting for Stiles’ response. Stiles let his eyes drag over the face of the first man he’d ever loved, skimming past the familiar contours of his cheekbones and counting each of the faint freckles that dotted his tan skin.

Even knowing that Alex hadn’t been directly responsible for what had happened to him, Stiles wavered over the possibility of forgiveness. Alex had still lied, or at least hadn’t told Stiles the entire truth, and he’d known how unhinged his brother could be but hadn’t done anything to stop him. It was the high alpha’s responsibility to maintain control of his pack and Alex had failed him, even if it wasn’t in the way that Stiles had previously thought. 

But Stiles could feel the anger bleeding out of him as he stared down at Alex, struck suddenly by how young the werewolf looked. He was only a year older than Derek and he was shouldering the burden of his position entirely alone. The Dacian pack was powerful but militant, with no room for perceived weakness and nothing like the family that the Beacon Hills pack had become over the years. Stiles weighed Alex’s good intentions against his negligence and he felt himself give way to acceptance. 

Stiles leaned forward to grab the back of Alex’s neck, reeling him in so that their foreheads were pressed together tightly. “I forgive you,” he whispered. He could feel the way the alpha’s answering smile crinkled the skin around his eyes.

They both stood, Stiles grabbing onto one of Derek’s arms for leverage. “You will always have a place with us if you want it,” Alex said, stepping back into line with his betas.

Stiles glanced over at Derek, who looked almost painfully uncertain, and then at the rest of their pack. He knew that any one of them would kill for him, and that he would willingly give up his life for any of theirs. Stiles slid one of his hands into Derek’s and tangled their fingers together as he said firmly, “I don’t need a place with you. I’m not alone.”

***

“We didn’t even get to use the molotov cocktails,” Erica grumbled once they were all crowded into the elevator.

“Personally, I’d still kind of like to set that supposed ‘high alpha’ on fire,” Lydia said cattily.

“Yeah,” Isaac agreed. “What the fuck even was that apology?  _ Oh Stiles, sorry I didn’t tell you we’re apparently mystical Romanian wolf soulmates and that my psycho brother tortured you, and then that other guy tried to kill you,” _ he said in a mocking impression of Alex’s gravelly voice. 

Erica snorted. “You definitely have a type, Stiles. I mean, who else could fall in love with not one but  _ two  _ hot, emotionally constipated alpha werewolves?”

Stiles flinched slightly at the light teasing, but Derek was the only one who seemed to notice his discomfort. He knew they were just relieved to have all made it out alive, but Stiles still felt raw and very far away from everything. It was like part of himself had stayed behind in that hotel room with Alex, and it was only the constant weight of Derek’s hand on his back that kept Stiles present in his own body.

Stiles waited until he was safely alone in the bathroom at the loft and the shower was running at full pressure to mask the sound of his rapid heartbeat before he broke down completely. Derek found him there nearly thirty minutes later, sitting on the cold bathroom floor and sobbing into his hands with ragged, gut-wrenching breaths. 

Derek didn’t say anything as he sank down beside him. Without really thinking about it, Stiles leaned into the other man’s steadying warmth, pressing his face into Derek’s broad shoulder and wrapping his arms around his chest in an awkward and slightly painful hug. Stiles knew he was making a mess of Derek’s shirt, but the alpha didn’t pull away. He just hugged Stiles carefully into his side, rubbing his back in soothing circles while Stiles cried through three years’ worth of repressed emotions.

Stiles wasn’t sure if it was minutes or hours later that his sobs finally subsided and he was able to pull in more than a shallow gasp of air. Derek didn’t give him any time to feel awkward about his breakdown, instead scooping him up in a gentle hold and carrying him out to the bedroom. Stiles let Derek tug his shoes off his feet and pull the comforter up around him, and beneath the layer of emotional numbness he felt an intense gratitude that Derek didn’t make him talk about any of it.

When Derek climbed into the bed beside him, Stiles instinctively turned and burrowed into him. They fell asleep with Stiles’ head on Derek’s chest, the alpha’s arms wrapped around him protectively. For the first time in months, Stiles didn’t have any nightmares.

***

Stiles barely got out of bed for the next two days. He knew that he was grieving, but he wasn’t sure what for. All of the time he’d wasted hating Alex without real cause? The alternate life he could have had if even just one thing had gone differently? The official, final end to his involvement with a pack that had briefly felt like home? 

Stiles voiced his thoughts to Derek one night, when they were ensconced in bed together and the world around them was dark and still, and the alpha hugged him tightly. “It’s all of it,” he said.

On the third day, Scott showed up at the loft with a takeout box of curly fries and the new FIFA. Stiles felt a part of himself return to his body as they sat shoulder to shoulder on the large sectional, cheering and cursing while they played. Another piece of himself slid back into place the following day when Lydia brought him a venti mocha and stayed to rant about her research, bemoaning her advisor’s stubbornness and her lab assistants’ stupidity. Allison was next, arriving with a binder full of wedding ideas and leftover cake samples. 

Stiles figured out pretty quickly that there was some kind of Stiles rota going on, probably organized by Derek, but he was still surprised at how well it seemed to be working. By the time Erica, Boyd, and Isaac showed up with an armful of action movies, Stiles felt almost back to normal. Or at least some new kind of normal.

Derek hadn’t so much as broached the topic of their fake-turned-maybe-real relationship, but Stiles was growing antsy as more time passed without talking about it. He was sitting on the counter one day – the same counter where Derek had re-tattooed his wards for him nearly three months previously – watching Derek make breakfast for them, the early morning sunlight illuminating the older man’s pale skin in a way that made Stiles ache with longing. They hadn’t kissed since the night that Stiles almost died, but he was seized by a sudden urge to press his lips to every square inch of Derek’s exposed torso.

“What are we?” Stiles asked, a touch of desperation leaking into his voice.

Derek stilled but didn’t look up from the stove, and Stiles was struck by a sense of deja vu. 

“What do you want to be?” Derek asked cautiously. 

“Yours,” Stiles responded immediately, the honesty of it too pure for him to feel embarrassed about how cheesy it sounded.

“It’s okay if you need time,” Derek said, now looking almost too intently at Stiles; he felt like he might burst into flames with the intensity of it. “It’s okay if you still love him.”

And now Stiles was sure he’d been set on fire, the pain of it entirely different from how it had felt when Cezar’s claws pierced through him, but still somehow similar in the way it encompassed his entire being. He slid off the counter so that he was crowded into Derek’s space and placed one of the alpha’s hands over his chest, holding it there so that Derek could feel as well as hear the steady beat of his heart.

“I love you,” Stiles said simply. 

Derek’s lips caught the tail end of the final word, sweeping down to capture Stiles’ mouth in a heated kiss. They stood in the middle of their kitchen, entwined together for seconds or hours or possibly several days, and Stiles felt the last missing piece of himself slot back into place.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well, that's it. This final chapter took a sharp turn from ass-kicking to angst – blame the seasonal depression. I hope you still found it reasonably satisfying. Thanks for reading!


End file.
